


Liminal Beings

by tristesses



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Flirting, Future Fic, Magic, Magical Accidents, Mind Control, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-01
Updated: 2012-09-01
Packaged: 2017-11-13 08:37:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/501557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tristesses/pseuds/tristesses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane Foster's job is finding holes in the universe and peering inside, so it really shouldn't be a surprise when something peers back. Now she has magical powers, the ability to walk between dimensions, and a devious Norse god intent on stealing her magic on her tail - but Loki has a few secrets of his own, and those secrets may land him and Jane in a lot more trouble than she ever wanted to deal with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Yottajoules

**Author's Note:**

  * For [milkforthesouffles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/milkforthesouffles/gifts).



> For this fic, I cherrypicked from comic canon, mythology, and folklore; research was half the fun! Then, of course, I combined it with my own ideas into a cocktail of pseudo-Norse magic, so do not look for accuracy here. Same goes for the science; I learned how to write technobabble from _Star Trek_ , after all.
> 
> This is slightly AU in that I use a popular piece of fanon as a major plot point; it was so fun to play with I couldn't resist. Other than that, though, this hews as close as I could get to _Thor_ and _Avengers_ canon.

When Jane was a child, she wanted to be an astronaut. Though the call of academia seduced her away from Space Camp, she never quite let go of that goal, even throughout all of high school, undergrad, and grad school. After she finally received her doctorate, she let herself indulge in that fantasy again - maybe, _maybe_ if she works hard enough, if she makes herself stand out, she'll get the funding to go into space…

Well, she's worked her fingers to the bone, she sure as hell has stood out, but Jane still never expected anything as amazing as this. Having her research funded by billionaires, being swept up by a super-secret organization that bears the pulp sci-fi name of the Sentient World Observation and Response Department - not only that, having _another_ super-secret organization squabbling with that one over who gets first dibs on her research - and being sat down and told, literally, to find gateways into alternate worlds other than the one _she's already found?_ Jane's pretty sure she's playing the plucky protagonist in a science fiction novel, but she isn't going to argue. She's happier than a cat with the proverbial cream right now.

Sinking back into a cozy chair on the observation deck of the Peak VII research facility, Jane sighs happily and stares into space. Space stares back, stretching vast and black, pricked with stars. She's been here for months, ever since S.W.O.R.D. plucked her from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s clutches, but sometimes she still has a hard time wrapping her head around how near she's come to her childhood goal. She's not an astronaut, but she's damn close.

Putting her hand up to the viewing window, as if she could just jump up and sprint the light-years to the nearest star, Jane feels a smile tugging at her lips. Here, even though she knows it's misleading, she can almost see the brightly burning colors of each spectral type star, and the old mnemonic falls from her lips as if she hasn't been out of school for more than a day.

"Oh be a fine girl kiss me," she whispers, and the person who's crept up behind her says dryly, "Excuse me?"

"Oh!" Jane jumps, and turns, fire flooding her face as she grins at the woman standing there. "Sorry, hi, I was just reminiscing. Would you like to sit down?"

"I'm fine, thanks," Agent Brand says, the corner of her mouth quirked just a little in amusement. "But you might want to stand up; we've got something we think you should see."

If there's any surer way to catch Jane's attention, she can't think of any. Following Brand as the agent strides from the observation deck to the main promenade, Jane nibbles at her lip and reminds herself that there's no reason to be intimidated by the woman. Just because she's a certified genius half-alien, and has the green hair and sage-tinted skin to prove it, doesn't mean that Jane can't hold her own with her. After all, Jane is dating, or had once dated - okay, is in a long-distance quasi-relationship with, that sounds about right - a Norse god; she's gotten used to this stuff by now. More or less.

Speeding her pace to catch up with Brand's long strides, Jane tucks her hair out of her face and eyes Brand in silence. The two of them haven't had much cause to speak to each other since Jane's arrival, as Jane is just one of many half-crazy scientists living the dream on board the station and Brand is the head of the place, but Jane has been wanting to gush about the place to her since about her third day.

Finally, deciding that being overly appreciative is better than looking ungrateful, Jane says, "Agent, I just wanted to say thank you again for inviting me on board the station. If S.W.O.R.D. hadn't taken an interest in my research, I have no idea where I'd be - so much of it needed to be done in orbit, and I wouldn't have - "

"Hey, when Nick Fury has a toy, we always try to take it," Brand says, cheerfully antagonistic as she always seems to be whenever Fury is brought up. She guides Jane into one of the pods that serves as a multi-directional elevator, hits the button for the astronomy deck, and adds, "And trust me, Dr. Foster, we are _very_ interested in your research."

 _Especially after what happened four years ago_ , Jane tacks on mentally. _Closing bridges is just as important as opening them to you._

She's smart enough not to say anything, though, and even if she had been inclined to comment, she's immediately distracted by the herd of scientists milling around the corridor right outside the pod tube. One hails her, waving in greeting, and Jane tries to put a name to the face as she makes her way through the crowd, leaving Agent Brand behind.

"Hi," she says to the woman, tentatively placing her as Dr. Something Orizaga, an astronomer with an interest in xenobiology. "What's up?"

"We've spotted something," Orizaga says excitedly. "An object. Our equipment can't read it - the electromagnetic interference is off the charts, I've never seen anything like it - but from what we _can_ see, it's been demonstrating behaviors that are…well, weird, frankly."

"Weird?" Jane asks, glancing over Orizaga's shoulder to the astrometry lab. Orizaga gestures her in. "My kind of weird?"

"Definitely your kind of weird," Orizaga confirms, indicating the sleek panels of instruments lining the walls and tables. "Check it out."

Jane bends to examine the output readings, taking a moment to run her fingers across the smooth, ergonomic lines of the machines. The stuff she builds herself is great, but this equipment is just gorgeous. 

"Huh," she says in surprise, peering at the screens. "These gamma signatures are congruent with the ones Einstein-Rosen bridges emit, but the rest of it doesn't seem to match up." She frowns at the display, and pokes it with her index finger. "See, it's much stronger, and this additional radiation doesn't fit. And what even is this part, anyway?"

"We don't know," Orizaga says with a sigh, speaking the words every scientist both loves and hates to hear. "Like I said, weird. It's in a visual spectrum, so we've been peeking at it under all sorts of filters, but there's nothing out of the ordinary."

"Let's bring it up anyway," Jane decides, and steps aside to let Orizaga attune the instruments, making minute adjustments.

"Okay," Orizaga says after a moment. "Here it is."

She brings the visual onscreen, and Jane tilts her head in curiosity. Ordinary indeed; it's just a star, an O-type, incredibly bright and a pale blue bordering on white. No, not blue, violet, and not just bright, but utterly incandescent, far beyond what this equipment should be able to pick up. It's so beautiful, just like how her childhood self had imagined stars to be…

Something beeps, and Jane jolts out of her reverie, blinking away the lingering afterimages of the star. The thing is _bright_ ; she can't quite shake it off.

"Are you sure this is working?" she asks after she gets a good look at the readouts, her voice skeptical. "Because this is saying that the object's mass is lighter than the station!"

"That - this can't be," Orizaga says, cutting her off. She sounds strange, almost frightened. "This just isn't possible."

"Hey, it's not your fault, instruments fail all the time - oh my god!" Jane looks up, and gasps audibly, actually covering her mouth with her hands.

The object on the screen is _moving._

It hurtles toward them at an incomprehensible speed, fast enough for its motion to be tracked on camera. Jane is gaping, and she's pretty sure Orizaga is, too. Behind them, she can hear a few other people talking in loud, excitable voices, but she can't take her eyes off the star. All the noise in the lab fades to the background, then drops away completely as the star grows closer, growing brighter, growing bigger, until its ultraviolet glare swamps Jane's vision and all she can hear is the soft hum of energy shooting through space more quickly than should be physically possible. This isn't normal, Jane knows, this shouldn't be happening, but her ears are ringing, she's clutching the display for support, and she can't close her eyes no matter how hard she tries, and the light is burning, _burning -_

"I don't understand," Orizaga is saying in frustration, her voice wobbling in and out of auditory range. Jane hears her, very faintly, but doesn't react. "It's actually losing mass as it comes closer! This just should not be possible!"

"Should we begin an evacuation of the station?" Agent Brand's cool voice. Jane doesn't catch the response. She finds herself leaning forward, pressing her palm to the viewscreen as if welcoming the light inside.

"Dr. Foster? What the hell do you think you're doing?" Brand yells, but Jane doesn't hear or care.

The star comes for her, speeding through the dark, passing through the walls of the station as if matter is nothing to it. Like a comet, it comes for her, and Jane knows she couldn't escape even if she wanted to.

The star aims straight for Jane's heart, and strikes home.

It's like an explosion, rattling her bones, shrieking through her spine and nervous system, and Jane throws back her head and screams. Every muscle and tendon in her body pulls to extremes, and she flings her arms wide, her back arching violently, her toes pointing like a ballerina's. Unearthly lights flow through her veins and arteries, her capillaries glittering with tiny stars, children of the one inside her, and Jane thinks dazedly that it looks like she has lightning in her blood. She screams, not because it hurts, but because it's too much, it's burning her up inside, it is _so beautiful -_

Everything contracts to a tiny point inside her chest, pulsing to the rhythm of her heart, and she thinks of black holes, of the ways matter and mass accrete until suddenly there is nowhere for them to go but through space, birthing a wormhole, creating a bridge -

And then her body quakes; a universe is born inside her heart, blooming under her skin. Jane closes her eyes, sees galaxies dancing upon her lids, and blacks out.

****

. . .

Half-asleep and scheming in a dimensional pocket far across the slopes, dunes, and swirls of space-time, Loki feels a thread of the universe slip out of place, then smooth back down. He sits bolt upright, instantly wide awake, and strains all his senses listening for more. When nothing else comes, he relaxes minutely. Breathing in careful patterns to slow his speeding heart, he spreads his long fingers before him, and sweeps them in a slow circle to summon a map of the realms. Nudging around its nooks and crannies with his magic, he searches for the source of such immense power, and finds it in the absolute last place he expects.

"Midgard?" he whispers, amazed. 

Then again, he reminds himself, the realm has proven so rich with magicians, mutants, superheroes, and other witless mortals in the past few years that this should not, perhaps, come as a surprise. Shaking the map from his fingers, he folds his hands in his lap and sits in the dark silence for a long time, thinking.

There are few powers known to Loki in the Nine Realms that match his in intensity, and he has become intimately acquainted with all of them in his time. This one is not familiar, and thus cannot be any sorcerer's native magic; Loki refuses to believe that he has so blatantly overlooked a mage of such strength. No, some foolish mortal or idle godling gone slumming has stumbled upon a source of power beyond their reckoning, power they have no hope of controlling. In untrained hands, it could tear its wielder apart, and the realm along with it. 

But if a wise sorcerer just so happened to take it from them, he could save lives; it would be an act of charity, really. 

How nice for Midgard that Loki plans to do just that.

****

. . .

Jane is unconscious, but entirely awake.

She stands within her memory palace, crafted when she was in college to help her remember all the formulae and random bits of information the average physics major needs to know, but it isn't the familiar, basic route she remembers. The simple cobblestone hallway she created those years ago does indeed stretch off to her right, but this one takes a jagged turn where the old one usually ended. To her left, as well as behind her and in front of her, additional pathways with waist-high walls break away from the round plinth she stands upon, and twist in complicated, knotted paths, forming a perfect circle with Jane in the very center. She steps down from her pedestal and drifts toward the left-hand path. She has the idea that she should be more alarmed, but a calm, peaceful feeling has permeated her dream-self, and instead of panicking or questioning her surroundings like she normally would, she's content to just investigate. 

There's a series of small doors embedded in the stone wall, and Jane kneels before them. None of them have handles or keyholes, but when Jane lays the tips of her fingers against one - not a random door, no, this one just _feels_ right - it swings open.

"Curiouser and curiouser," she says, and laughs. Certain of her safety, for whatever strange reason, she crawls through the door into a room filled with violet-white light.

This is clearly the source of her tranquil state; as the light fills her vision, she closes her eyes and basks in it. It doesn't feel dangerous at all. In fact, it feels…curious. Yes, curious; it's definitely sapient, if at the most basic level, and Jane feels it nosing around her incorporeal body, curved beams of light cradling her gently. Jane holds still, and allows it to explore. 

Whatever it finds delights it, and she thinks she can feel it humming like a purring cat. Without really leaving, it swirls through and around her, and out the little door she left open; when she follows it, she looks around with awe. It's taken up residence in every crevice of her memory palace, strands of violet sinking deep into the stone. Beautiful. Jane grins helplessly, overcome, and opens her hands to it; the light strokes her palms, a gentle, protective touch, and vibrates in pleasure.

And then she hears her name.

"Dr. Foster? Can you hear me?"

A voice she recognizes, a voice she can't ignore. Regretfully, she looks around at the memory palace and its new inhabitant, and says, "I have to go."

The light - _sighs_ , that's the only term she can think of, but accepts her words, and suddenly the stones beneath her feet melt away, plunging her into an eerie darkness blacker than the depths of space. Fear rushes through her, but then a comforting force takes hold of her. She's pulled down - or is that up? - like a rock sinking, or a diver surfacing. Up (down), up (down), up she goes -

****

. . .

She comes to in what looks like a hospital room, but something about it pings her the wrong way. Groggy, she tries to sit up, but is brought up short by something: restraints on her wrists and upper arms, and wrapped around her thighs, too. They look like fabric, but have no give and grip as tight as metal cuffs.

"What," she croaks, and then, "Can I have some water?"

"Sure you can." It's Agent Brand by her bedside, bringing her a cup of water with a plastic straw. Jane drinks it greedily, and makes a sad noise when Brand pulls it away.

"Can't give you too much too soon, you're pretty dehydrated." Brand drags a chair over and sits beside the bed. "Nice to have you with us again."

"It's nice to be back," Jane says. She twitches within her restraints, plagued by a sudden itch on her cheek. "Can I please take these off?"

"In a minute. First I need to ask you some questions." Brand's tone is brisk, but strangely wary. "What are you working on, on board the Peak VII, Dr. Foster?"

"What?" Jane says again. She blinks, trying to clear her head, and continues slowly, "I'm searching for naturally-occurring, stable Einstein-Rosen bridges in deep space. For ways to travel to distant parts of the universe. You know that, it's why you brought me here."

"And what else are you searching for?"

"What?" Jane really needs to stop saying that. She frowns. "Nothing - what else would I be looking for?"

"Something thought you'd make a nice home for it," Brand says, gesturing to Jane's body. "Maybe that's what you were after."

Images of violet light in a stone-paved garden trickle through her mind, but they're unclear, and Jane doesn't know where they came from or why she's thinking of them. 

"I don't know," she says, frustrated. "It just happened! I didn't plan it or anything." A thought strikes, and she tries to sit up again, defeated once more by her restraints. "I need those readouts. Did Orizaga make any progress trying to figure them out?"

Agent Brand ducks her head, looking uncomfortable, and clears her throat.

"Jane, Dr. Orizaga is dead."

Jane's jaw drops, and dizziness sweeps over her. Dead? Her mouth works, but she can't find anything to say. The woman who just a few hours ago was standing next to her, working with her, is dead?

"Whatever entered you caused a big enough electrical surge to fry all our equipment, as well as all the personnel in the room. Except you, of course," Brand says, going for soothing and missing by a mile. "I'm sorry, Jane. She was a valuable asset."

"She was more than an asset!" Jane cries out, and shuts her eyes tight, tears leaking from underneath her lashes. _Dead. Orizaga is dead,_ she thinks. _And it's my fault._

Brand is silent, but Jane can feel her eyes boring into her skull.

"I think we can take these off now," she says finally, and to Jane's surprise, the restraints detach themselves and slide into the bed like little snakes. Peak VII's technology was impressive, but she didn't remember anything like that on board.

"Where am I, anyway?" she asks, as much to get her mind off Orizaga as to satisfy her curiosity.

"You're in Pandora's Box," Brand says, and at Jane's expression, she adds, "It's essentially S.W.O.R.D.'s biohazard station, reinforced with the most advanced technology currently known to us, and sturdier than Earth itself. Nothing gets in or out without us knowing."

"You took me here because you thought I'd be a threat," Jane says in dawning realization. As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she realizes their foolishness, and winces.

"You already were," Brand says, echoing Jane's thoughts. "Since you didn't ask, you didn't get badly hurt, though you're going to have a hell of a scar at the exit point. We're going to run tests, and if you're cleared for release, we'll let you out and see what this thing did to you."

Jane nods, unable to speak through the lump in her throat. She wants nothing more than to go to sleep, and to wake up to find this whole thing was a nightmare.

****

. . .

Loki stands on the observation platform of the bigger mortal craft, watching space with narrowed eyes. Somewhere close and cloaked from sight, the other facility revolves around the planet below in synchronized orbit with this one, and somewhere on that, the most potent power Loki has seen in centuries resides. Only their unexpectedly advanced technology prevents him from going there now and taking what rightfully belongs to him; unfortunately, a most complicated spell is necessary for the task, and Loki has had to wait for the thing to be completed for the past two weeks.

With nothing else to do, Loki has found himself growing bored and his temper growing ever sharper. This doesn't bode well for the mortals aboard, nor, frankly, for his disguise; Loki loves tricks of any kind, but not when he goes unacknowledged for his cleverness, and he can hardly take out his annoyance on the mortals while keeping his presence a secret. Of course, if he left, even to a place as close as Midgard, he would have a whole world with which to play.

 _Since that went so well the last time_ , he says to himself, and quashes the thought at once.

With an irritated snort, Loki turns from the viewing window and strides from the room, earning a few sideways glances from the mortals around him, though nothing else. He wears the shape and clothing of one of their own (the man he chose to imitate lovingly disposed of through an airlock), and none have guessed his true nature. On the whole, they are easy to deceive; most of them are scholars, not soldiers, and like most scholars they have no sense of danger unless it directly threatens their research. Loki was much the same when he was young, before Asgard demanded he give up his books for the sword, and he had to learn the one to defend his interest in the other. It gives him a certain level of sympathy with the sad creatures, though not enough to make him regret it if he has to destroy them in his bid to acquire the magic.

His thoughts drift back to Midgard. It has been nearly four years since last he set foot there, having developed an aversion to being caught in the middle of alien wars that he has, in essence, unwillingly brought down upon the place, and being subsequently imprisoned for it, but other than that, there are few disadvantages to staying there. Tracking the magic from the planet's surface would be a relatively easy feat, a bit more effort that this, but nothing he can't handle, and the amount of deluded do-gooders there offer him a vast pool of entertainment from which to pick and choose. Loki has no desire for a throne anymore; no, he craves something else entirely.

Somehow, however, he finds himself disinclined to leave. Something is keeping him here; something about the magic contained so close by is drawing him nearer, a magnetic force refusing to let him go. Loki does not like to be trapped, least of all by unidentifiable magic. And yet, here he remains.

His pacing takes him to his living quarters, originally owned by the mortal he evicted into outer space. They are small and spartan, but all Loki really requires to live is a bed, a bath, and a place to work, and the place serves his purpose well enough. Entering the room, he makes his way to the closet and pulls aside the magic draped like a veil over the doorway, hiding it from prying eyes. Inside, his shadow-cloak slowly revolves, coalescing into shape. It will be finished within hours, Loki estimates, and a thrill of anticipation runs through his stomach. When he slips it on, he will be utterly indistinguishable to both man and machine; the mortals will see whomever they expect to see, and none of their technology will detect a thing. Hopefully. Almost certainly. Loki hasn't actually had the opportunity to test it, but he's sure of his skills.

Settling on the floor in front of his closet, legs crossed, Loki rests his hands on his knees and shuts his eyes. Tilting his head back, he looks deep inside himself. His magic rises around him, enveloping him in a deep green mist, and Loki sighs, relaxing into it.

All sorcerers see the core of their magic differently. Loki has known dwarven mages whose gifts with metal and stone were housed in giant caves crafted in the depths of their minds, and priests of Álfheim with their magic laced through the trees of their mind-bowers. An acquaintance of his keeps hers sequestered in a lusciously appointed bedroom, woven into the plush carpets and soft sheets. Once, Loki's core was centered in a stone circle in the heart of a forest rimed with winter's frost (Loki has spent four years avoiding the implications of _that_ ), and he used to spend days at a time wandering its paths, constantly discovering new powers, new uses for his magic. Now…

Now Loki hangs in perfect emptiness, somewhere darker than any lack of light could be and stiller than the Void, but his magic comes for him even in that lonely place. Wrapped in its embrace, Loki allows himself a measure of relaxation, feeling safer here than he can remember feeling since - well. It matters not.

In the waking world, Loki might have flinched at those memories, but here in his core, he can neither see nor hear unless he wishes it, and he emphatically does not wish it. Thus he is spared any recollections his restless mind may have dredged up. Here, he can have peace.

Loki rests.

He rests.

And then he is brought sharply and unpleasantly back to the physical world, as two things scream for his attention.

Stumbling to his feet, Loki drags his hands through his hair and tries to shake himself alert. His shadow-cloak has finished forming, he sees, and it hangs shimmering in the closet, ready for use. As for the second alarm…Loki pauses, concentrating hard, but whatever it was is fading rapidly - no! There it is again, a flare of energy that bites at his senses in a way both pleasurable and painful. On the other vessel, the bearer of the magic is fooling around with it again. What perfect timing.

Loki smirks, and sweeps the cloak around his shoulders, feeling it sink into his skin with a tingle. His meditation did him good; he feels better than he has in days, sharper, swifter.

Sneaking on board the other vessel is deplorably simple, and Loki spares a moment to congratulate himself on a spell skillfully cast. He has time - his quarry seldom spends less than an hour playing with their gifts - so he allows himself to indulge in mischief, meandering the halls, purposefully getting in people's way. It's a little thing, but Loki finds petty amusement in gaining no reaction from any of them; their gazes slide off him, looking through him, and any who do pause dismiss him immediately as inconsequential. Evidently his spell was successful, as he expected. Skirting a mortal man in the corridor, Loki snaps his fingers and the man trips, a victim of unstable airflow. He notices nothing. A sardonic smile curls Loki's lips; still oblivious, even on a ship with a reputation for paranoia. Ah, mortals. He's half-tempted to give them a real show, just to prove he can, but Loki likes to think he has a bit more sense than that.

He's forced to pause several times in front of complicated locking mechanisms, taking a few seconds to decipher their coding and break them. The lock directly outside his destination is the trickiest; whoever designed it was clever, and Loki doubts he could create a stronger ward himself if deprived of magic and Asgardian materials. But they cannot outsmart Loki, and after just a minute or two the door swings open. Loki enters, an incantation on his lips and a spell at his fingertips.

" - you've got this under control, maybe we can send you planetside," a woman says to another; Loki only catches the end of her sentence. She is clearly not from Midgard, though she wears the dress of one of their warriors, while the other woman is just as clearly Midgardian by birth, most likely one of the many scholars on this vessel.

"Maybe back to Puente Antiguo," the warrior's companion suggests in a terribly familiar voice. Loki struggles to place it as she continues. "I still have my old research station there, and it's only a half-hour drive until you're out of sight of civilization completely, so no one would get hurt. It's ideal!"

From her comes the overwhelming presence of magic, and Loki closes his eyes, reveling in it.

"Who are you?"

The sharp voice cuts into his thoughts, and Loki's eyes snap open. The alien woman is glaring at him, displeased, and Loki experiences a moment of panic - his spell doesn't work especially well on non-humans, it seems - but his easy smile comes quickly, and he slathers on the charm.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, Agent," he says smoothly. "Director Fury is on the line. He says it's urgent."

Her eyes narrow. "I spoke to Nick just a few hours ago. What's got him in such a hurry?"

Damn. It was such a good excuse, too.

"I have no idea," he apologizes. "I imagine it's confidential."

His eyes flick to the other woman, who's turned to face him, an inquiring expression on her face and magic sparking in her eyes. At the sight of her, Loki's world tilts. Her eyes. Her _face_. Loki does know this woman. Loki spent days staring down at her from the Bifröst, wondering what about her could possible intrigue Asgard's golden prince so much that he would change from the brutish man Loki had known all his life simply to be by her side.

"Jane Foster?" he asks, his voice rising to a near shout. He controls himself quickly, and adds, "I believe it's about Jane Foster."

"Really?" Jane asks, her tone lilting upward. Behind her, the alien agent is speaking furtively into her wrists, undoubtedly summoning reinforcements. Loki needs to work quickly. He steps forward and holds out his hand.

"I'm Agent Golmen," he says, plucking a name at random from the air. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Jane Foster, but I guess you already knew that." She doesn't take his hand. Something flickers in her doe-like eyes; suspicion, he thinks. He forgets that she is a scholar of note; she may not be as easy to mislead as the others.

Loki is rapidly growing annoyed with the whole situation. Tired of playing polite, he steps forward and grabs her hand. She yelps indignantly and tries to pull away, but he holds her fast, twining tendrils of magic inside her, searching for her core, and then -

Something surges within him, an uncontrollable outpouring of magic from deep within him, taking him by surprise. It's not natural, he isn't doing it - she's summoning his magic somehow. How _dare_ she?

"What are you doing?" he shouts, his voice cracking.

"I don't know!" Jane cries out, panicked. His magic floods through his body, sizzling down his arms with all the violence of a death spell, and connects with Jane's magic at their clasped palms, bursting into brilliant, blinding light. Loki bites down hard on his tongue to keep silent, and Jane shrieks; and suddenly, terrifyingly, Loki feels Jane's magic _in him_ , coursing along the routes his native powers always take. It's indescribable, intolerable, invasive, she is in his veins and beneath his tongue and inside his mind ( _not again_ , he chants in his head, possibly out loud, _not again, I can't take this again_ ), and for a brief moment, when Loki shuts his eyes, he can see a stone pavilion that echoes the one he once had in his core, violet light entwined with vines around knee-high walls. He finds himself leaning heavily into her, his body unable to support itself, and then, just as quickly as the sorcery overtook him, it ceases.

Loki flings Jane's hand away from his and staggers back, breathing heavily. Jane falls to the ground and stays there, sprawled on her back and staring at him with wide eyes; the agent has her gun out, aiming at his forehead. She's speaking, but Loki can't take his eyes off Jane.

"What was that?" she asks incredulously, and Loki swallows hard.

"I - " His mind whirls. All lies and smooth falsehoods have dropped from his tongue; he's drunk from the flood of magic through his system. He can't think. He has to get out of here. "I don't know, I don't."

Loki turns tail and flees, shouting an incantation as he goes - a blunt-force memory spell, roughly equivalent to smashing a nail with Mjölnir, but effective. As he runs, he teleports, the world dissolving behind him.

And as the world reinstates itself around him, Loki keeps moving, and runs headlong into a brick wall.

This is really not his day.

****

. . .

Jane stares down at her hands, her brow creased in confusion. As her mind clears, she tries to sort out events: she was in Pandora's Box, she had something inside her…magic? Yes, she analyzed the energy signatures, and she can envision the results now: they matched almost exactly to the signatures of the one other Asgardian sorcerer in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s database. She was practicing with it, learning to control it, sort of, and then…

She wasn't alone. Jane whips around, and sees Agent Brand in a crumpled heap on the floor.

"Abigail!" she cries out, dropping to her knees beside her.

"We on a first name basis, now?" Brand groans, rolling over. She shields her eyes from the light of the gym with one hand.

"We have been for weeks," Jane says, still decidedly confused. "Haven't we?"

Brand props herself up on her elbows.

"Yeah," she says slowly. "Yeah, we have. I remember now. What the hell happened?"

Jane looks around, scolding herself for forgetting to do so earlier. There's a scorch mark on the floor about fifteen feet away from them, and the ozone scent of what she's learned is magic hangs in the air. That's it.

"I think I exploded," she says doubtfully. The explanation just _feels_ wrong, but she can't think of anything else. "My magic just went haywire or something."

"We'll have to check the cameras," Brand says, and Jane winces. Technology and magic don't go well together, she's figured out. Brand catches her meaning, and sighs heavily, pushing herself to her feet.

"Sorry," Jane says meekly, feeling stupid.

"It's not your fault," Brand says resignedly, the same words she's been saying since Jane was struck by the star in the first place. She holds her wrist to her mouth and speaks into her receiver, and when no reply comes, she mutters something in her native language that sounds extremely nasty.

"When Thor gets here, he can help me figure this out," Jane reassures her, planting her hands firmly on her hips. Her voice is firm, mostly because she genuinely thinks he'll be able to help her, but also because she needs to boost her confidence a little. She and Brand sent word to S.H.I.E.L.D. ages ago, and they presumably contacted Asgard. What's taking Thor so long?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> S.W.O.R.D. and Agent Brand are both plucked from the comics, though probably not in any recognizable form.


	2. Tree of Deceits

Loki hits the wall face-first at full speed and rebounds with an undignified yelp, clapping his hands to his bleeding nose. He bolted blindly from Jane Foster's presence, relying on pure intuition to send him someplace relatively safe; judging from the fact that he still has his sanity and all his limbs, he's succeeded. Stepping back, Loki glances around at his surroundings, on the alert for any dangers. None are to be found. He's tucked away in a dismal back alley, presumably in some Midgardian city, the sky tinged an ugly grey with ambient light, as per usual for the realm. The stars are barely visible, only the brightest cutting through the smog; he manages to locate the Dog Star, his namesake, which eases his mind somewhat, but not much. No sorcerer likes being cut off from the stars, even Loki, who does not derive power from their movements like some. It makes his skin itch and sets his teeth on edge. No, he really is not a fan of Midgard.

He ducks out of the alley, certain that his nondescript uniform and the blood on his face will render him unrecognizable to any security cameras, and is greeted by the sight of Avengers Tower, née Stark Tower, with the blaring neon A that serves as an unpleasant reminder of his encounter with Midgard's so-called mightiest heroes. Loki drops his hands from his face and slumps against the building next to him. Normally, he is a very fortunate man, as men who make their own luck often are, but the fates seem to be conspiring against him lately.

"Lovely," he mutters, and wipes the blood off his face with the back of his hand. He will go to Nornheim and strangle those damned witches himself if things don't sort themselves out.

But as cathartic as it is, cursing the Nornir does little to improve his lot. Loki requires a place to rest and plot his course of action for when Jane Foster does return to the planet's surface - and to take a long bath, if his luck changes for the better even slightly. Where did she say she wished to go?

"Puente Antiguo," he whispers in the same lilting cadence Jane used, creeping around the building and swinging himself up the fire escape with a huff. The same miserable stretch of desert he razed with the Destroyer. An interesting choice of location. She's clearly a creature of habit, Loki muses as he quietly breaks into a flat, setting off a beeping alarm and incinerating it just as quickly. He locates the bathroom quickly, sighing with relief when he sees the bathtub, and spends a moment deciphering the faucet handles before turning on the water. 

Imitating a trusted confidant will surely be the quickest way to Jane's side. The scientist Selvig, perhaps? Loki shakes his head. Unacceptable; he may know the man's mind well, but only the altered form; Jane knows him better, and as she proved on the space station, she is clever and observant, and Loki must trick her as thoroughly as he hadn't before.

A thought occurs, and Loki very nearly drops his left vambrace into the rapidly filling bath. It's delightfully obvious yet deliciously subtle, and has the dual benefits of getting him what he wants and infuriating his would-be brother. Very pleased with himself, Loki strips down and submerges himself in the bath, the hot water dissolving the layer of blood and grime on his skin. Yes, this is perfect.

****

. . .

A wide scar twists along her spine, fanning out into a hundred thin red lines, sketching a fractal pattern across Jane's skin. It looks like a tree, roots feathering over her hips, tall branches stretching to the tops of her shoulders. Jane reaches back to brush her fingers over what she's come to think of as the top twigs, and feels only smooth skin.

The doctors had declared it a lightning scar, and promised her that it would fade within two weeks. A month later, it's still as vivid as it was in the first few hours after the Incident, as S.H.I.E.L.D. has taken to calling it. They'd taken custody of her the instant she touched soil, claiming that she was no longer in S.W.O.R.D.'s jurisdiction, and promptly became skittish about calling her powers what they were. She can't blame them, really, considering the last magic user they had to deal with. Their experts spent days poking and prodding at her scar, and finally declared it to be nothing but what it appeared to be. 

Jane knows better, and when they offered her plastic surgery to fix it, she turned them down. She likes the scar, actually; it's beautiful, in a creepy way, and when she looks at it she can practically hear Darcy saying, "Neato tattoo, dude!" It isn't like she was particularly vain before, anyway, and now she has _magic_ , so she figures the trade-off was well worth it. Magic is brilliant, everything a scientist could dream of; Jane wants to research, calculate, quantify, clarify, to understand how it works and why; she wants to know why it chose her, out of all the billions of people on the planet. Why her? And where did it come from?

Sadly, she isn't much closer to finding answers. On her behalf, S.W.O.R.D. and S.H.I.E.L.D., in a rare example of inter-agency cooperation, had contacted every known magician within their reach, and all of them were baffled, with the exception of Dr. Strange, who gave her very good advice about controlling it and then tried to do experiments on her. Jane got out of his life fast, and for a while, that basic knowledge he gave her was enough. But as the days slip through her fingers and she comes no closer to learning more about her newfound powers, she grows more and more eager to try things out for herself. She even goes online and researches modern constructions of old Norse rituals, but no matter what herbs she burns or how much she practices her pronunciation, her magic stays stubbornly silent unless she asks it nicely to flame from her fingertips or throw sparks across the sky, which is pretty, but not useful. Jane is an infinitely patient person - look at how long she spent chasing Einstein-Rosen bridges when no one else believed they were real! - but she's starting to get annoyed.

Jane flexes her hand, stretching her fingers out as far as they can go, and summons a teeny burst of power from where it rests in her memory palace. It runs down her arm, hot like candle wax but inside her skin, and sparks violet from her fingertips. Her scar sears, but like all the heat that comes with her magic, it feels absolutely wonderful.

"Dr. Foster?"

Holliday, the agent who's been assigned as her personal caretaker, is young and awkward and takes his job very, very seriously. He still calls her Dr. Foster, even though she's told him many times to call her Jane.

"Yes?" she calls back, hooking her bra and sliding on her unicorn tee (an "ironic" gift from Darcy).

"You have a visitor, I think."

Jane hasn't heard him sound so uncertain the entire time they've been in Puente Antiguo. Jane sticks her head out of the trailer, and sees the telltale characteristics of an Einstein-Rosen bridges brewing in the sky. Jumping out into the heat of the day, she grabs a S.H.I.E.L.D. tech and demands, "Are the scanners up and running?"

"Yes, Dr. Foster," he says dutifully, like she doesn't ask him that ten times a day.

"Good. All data is good data!"

She jogs to the middle of her campsite, using her hand as a visor to peer into the sky. The lightning storm looks weird in daylight, sort of skewed, like a rainbow filtered through thick, cracked glass. Her magic prickles in answer to the buzz, and Jane grins.

The bridge arcs high overhead, then slams down in a cloud of dust and refracted light. Agent Holliday jumps, and Jane elbows him gently.

"It's all right, I've seen this a hundred times." She pauses, then amends, "Well, about ten. But I know it's safe!"

And it definitely is, because the bridge brought Thor to her.

"Lady Jane!" he booms, striding toward her, clutching Mjölnir in his hand.

"Hi, Thor!" she chirps in response, and smiles when he bends to kiss her hand. It's been a while since he's done that, and it's just as charming as ever. "It's been a long time. How are you? How's Asgard?"

"I am well, and when I departed from Asgard, it was flourishing, too," Thor says, with that brilliant smile that lights up his whole face. "It is good to see you, Jane. I've missed you."

"I missed you too," she says, and hugs him, wrapping her arms around his waist. He hugs her back, taking care not to clutch her too hard, and Jane sighs, his touch reminding her of when they first met and she went stupid in the presence of his abs. She thought that spark had burnt out between them, but maybe not.

Straightening, Thor holds her at arms' length and gazes at her like he's never seen her before. It really is immensely flattering, and Jane bites her lip, feeling her blush burn deeper.

"I hear you have a magic problem," Thor teases, and Jane perks up even more.

"I really wouldn't call it a problem," she says, gladly ruining the moment, and grabs him by the arm. "Come on, I have something _amazing_ to show you!"

. . .

"I'm afraid I won't be of much use to you," Thor says, staring in fascination at the arcs of color she's drawing in the sky. "All I know of sorcery are bits of half-remembered lessons from my childhood."

"Really?" she asks, and sends a burst of purple lightning into the air, creating a small sonic boom with her ferocity. "What about Lo - I mean, I thought you grew up around magic. You know, when you were an adult, not just a kid."

"Loki is a sorcerer, yes," Thor says deliberately, and Jane sneaks a glance at him. He has a thoughtful look on his face. "Perhaps - no, never mind."

"No, what is it?"

Thor hesitates, then says, "He is the only sorcerer I know of whose magic is comparable to your own. Perhaps if you submitted to his tutelage…"

" _What?_ " Jane spins around to stare at him in total shock. "Thor, I know you love him, but he tried to take over my planet! He - he mind-raped people!"

"Jane!"

"What? It's true," she shoots back. "What else would you call it? No way, I'm not letting him within a hundred feet of me."

"Even if he swore to do you no harm?" Thor asks lowly. Jane snorts.

"Loki doesn't exactly strike me as the promise-keeping type," she snaps.

"He has never broken an oath," Thor points out, which Jane has to admit is true, according to the reading she's done. "Would you really turn down that opportunity to gain his knowledge of spellwork and sorcery?"

"Yes!" she insists. But Jane, alarmingly, isn't sure. The list of crazy things she's done for knowledge is extensive, starting from when she was in third grade and ran away from summer camp with a small, stolen telescope to watch the Perseids alone in the dark, and ending somewhere around the time she broke the law with a gorgeous yet possibly insane guy she'd met that morning to get her equipment back. But trusting Loki?

"I don't know," she says finally, raking her hands through her hair with a sigh. "I know it's awful, but I really don't know."

Thor places a hand on her shoulder and squeezes it gently.

"It matters not," he soothes. "It was just a thought. He would be unlikely to agree, anyway."

"Yeah," Jane says, deflating. She's always been good at being indignant, but Thor has a way of taking the wind out of her sails. She leans into his hand, and he pulls her to his chest in a hug.

"Hey," she says, a thought popping into her mind. "Have you ever heard anything magical about scars?"

Thor pulls away, peering down into her face.

"They often hold significant power in spellcasting," he says, nodding. "Warriors earn many scars, especially from opponents unscrupulous enough to wage war with magic."

Jane frowns a little. "That doesn't seem unscrupulous to me. Wouldn't you want to use everything in your arsenal?"

"Well, yes," Thor says, "but it's dishonorable."

Jane wants to ask just what about war _is_ honorable, but she figures explaining pacifism to a guy from a warrior culture would take too much time.

"Well, I'm not really a fighter, so I guess it's not relevant," she shrugs. "Anyway, I have this scar. The doctors say it's a lightning wound, but it reacts whenever I use my magic, like it's, I don't know, conducting it or something. And the shape is weird, too - remember when you were telling me about the Nine Realms, that night on the roof?"

"Yes?"

"It kind of reminds me of the pattern you drew. I know it's a long shot, but I thought you could take a look at it, see if you recognized it."

"Of course, Jane," he says with a smile, and she smiles back.

"Cool," she says. "Come on, I'll show you."

She leads him to her trailer, and winces as he nearly hits his head on the doorframe; she's forgotten how much space he takes up. Jane clears off a space for him to sit, apologizing hastily about the mess, but thankfully she doesn't shove any cereal bowls in cupboards this time.

"Jane," Thor says, after she's puttered around for a minute or two. "I can't help you if you don't show me."

Jane gives a little half-laugh and looks at him sheepishly. "Yeah, sorry."

She lifts the hem of her shirt, then hesitates; something about his gaze is strangely intent, but then he blinks and his face is normal Thor again. And it's not like he hasn't seen her topless before, anyway, so she turns her back to him and strips off her shirt, reaching around to unhook her bra. Thor exhales sharply, and Jane tenses in vague anticipation when she feels his fingers on her skin.

"Yggdrasil," he says quietly, almost reverently. "So it is."

"I was thinking it was some kind of trail guide, or something, maybe?" She glances over her shoulder, and Thor gathers her loose hair in his hands and gently tucks it out of the way.

"Yes," he replies. He's absorbed in her body, tracing the trails of her scars with one calloused finger. Jane shivers. "These are the nine main branches. Asgard is here - " He taps the vertebra where her neck meets her shoulders. "Álfheim and Vanaheim here." These were on each of her shoulder-blades. "Midgard, of course, surrounded by the Midgard Serpent."

"Is that true?" she asks, partly to distract herself from the disconcertingly good sensation of him tracing circles on the small of her back. "I always thought it was just a myth."

"It's a metaphor," he informs her. "Jörmungand does indeed exist, but in a different ring of the World Tree, so to speak."

"So a different dimension. That's just cool."

"Yes, I suppose," he says, and he sounds amused.

"Can we travel there?"

Thor stills, and she feels him hesitate before he speaks.

"Yes. There are alternate paths, hidden paths, that lead deep into the Tree." He lays his hand flat against her back. "Some even go to its core, though I have never walked them."

"They're dangerous, then."

"Very. Though your body serves as a map to some of them. Here, these offshoots from the main branches - " His fingers run lightly across her back, and Jane is torn between wanting him to never touch her again and to never, ever stop. "These are the guides to the in-between worlds, the realms that float between the branches of the World Tree, in the depths of the Void."

Thor's voice catches on that part, and she says softly, recalling a story he told her years ago, "That's where Loki went, right?"

A very long pause. Then he says, "Yes."

"I'm sorry," she says. "It must suck to bring that up, considering - "

Her mind catches up with her tongue, and she snaps her mouth closed on the rest of her sentence, which goes something like _considering how he went crazy and tried to destroy the world and then I yelled at you last time you mentioned him._

"It's nothing," he says. "Forget about it."

"That's un-Thor-like of you," she jokes, and he snorts.

"I suppose it is," he replies, and Jane is struck by the thought that nothing about this conversation is like the Thor she knew. Whatever he's been up to in Asgard over the past year, he'd clearly been hitting the books. Jane knows he's smart, she'd never fall for a dumb guy, but she doesn't remember him being this erudite, talking not just about alternate realms but inter-dimensional travel and magical scar interpretation. It's nice. Different, but nice.

"Well, what are the other worlds?" she asks, diverting the subject. "There are other worlds, right?"

"Of course!" he says, affronted. "They're called the Nine Realms for a reason, you know. There's Niflheim and Svartálfheim," which are at her left hip, "and Múspelheim and Jötunheim," at her right. There's that slight catch in his voice again, but this time Jane has the sense not to mention his brother. Adopted brother. Whatever.

"And then, of course, there's Hel." Thor brushes his fingers along her skin where it meets the waistline of her jeans. Then suddenly he runs tickling fingers up her spine, adding, "And Ratatosk, the squirrel who climbs it all!"

Jane yelps and twists away from him, covering her breasts with her arms and bursting into giggles.

"I suppose that's a metaphor, too?" she asks, once she's somewhat under control.

"No," Thor says solemnly. "There truly is a squirrel carrying messages up and down the metaphysical trunk of Yggdrasil."

She grins at him, and he smirks back. The expression sits oddly on his face, and once again she wonders at how much he's changed. It's a complete 180 from how he was when she first met him, and from how he was this morning, as a matter of fact. He hadn't been acting like this earlier in the day, had he? Something makes her shiver, but it's decidedly unpleasant this time.

It must show in her eyes, because the smirk drops off Thor's face and he leans back, as if physically distancing himself from the conversation.

"And now we know," he says, nodding to her back. "However, it will take me - or an experienced sorcerer, rather - a long time to decode the secrets you have written in your skin. We'll need to be patient. You can put your shirt back on now."

Jane does as she's told, scooping up her clothes, unsettled. A feeling of foreboding has nestled in her gut, turning her cold, and her skin erupts in goosebumps. She enjoyed today, she's loved talking to him and finally figuring out what's up with her scars, but…something is wrong.

Jane suddenly realizes she hasn't seen him with Mjölnir since he got here. She can't even remember where he put it down. Thor never goes far without his hammer at his side.

Yeah, something is very, very wrong.

****

. . .

As it happens, wearing Thor's shape does not prevent Loki's own magic from reaching out to Jane's. Loki jerks his hand away from Jane's skin and holds his breath for a long moment, disciplining his body, willing the illusion to stay in place. Everywhere he touched her called to his magic, every reddened line he sketched with his fingertips drew verdant sparks from his hands, her scars flaring violet in response. Magic is etched deep into Jane's skin, and Loki knows now he can't tear it out unless she gives it willingly. Even death cannot tame it; if he tries to take it by brute force and slays Jane in the process, the magic will simply wink out like a candle, lost to the aether. A pity; it would have been so easy.

But perhaps that isn't all bad. From what he has seen of her, both during the week he spent watching her from the shadows and their time together today, she seems to be enthralled with magic for its own sake, full of a guileless drive to simply _know_ things, a trait Loki rarely encounters, and only barely remembers having himself. He finds he likes it. She is uniquely perceptive for a mortal, too, more intelligent than he had given her credit for earlier. Part of Loki truly does want to tutor her, as he suggested earlier in his guise as Thor, to give her wings and see how she soars - and if she crashes and burns in the end. She does have the potential for greatness. 

Perhaps he should nurture it, and then, if his time is not wasted, she'll be in his debt, a position in which he always likes people as powerful as her to be. This way, he need not kill her, a thought that pleases him. Contrary to rumor, Loki doesn't enjoy bloodshed, especially that of a creature as rare of form and mind as Jane Foster.

Loki watches her dress, his eyes on her scars as they ripple and twist with the movement of her muscles. Of course, there's no guarantee that she'll accept his offer, but Loki is willing to wager she will. It might take time to persuade her, but her natural curiosity will beg to be sated, and Loki is smug in the knowledge that he is the only one with talent enough to teach her.

As the days roll by, Jane becomes more and more comfortable in his presence, and Loki becomes more and more persuasive. He drops references to himself in conversations, little asides not significant enough to set her off again (Loki had flinched when she'd reacted to his name with such disgust, barely succeeding at passing it off as Thor's distress), slowly coaxing her around to the concept of being his pupil; it's working well, if Loki may say so himself. All in all, it's a good enough plan. Unfortunately, he made it up on the fly, and despite how he tries, even Loki cannot be prepared for any eventuality.

When everything goes wrong, Loki knows exactly what is happening; the Chitauri have found him. His time is up. His magic responds to the emergence of the portal before the mortals can even see it shimmer in the sky, but it is not nearly enough time to flee. 

"What is it?" Jane shouts, torn between alarm and excitement. "Is someone else coming?"

"I know not, Jane," he calls back, and as the clouds roil above, he holds out his hand and summons his false Mjölnir to his side. The shaft thuds into his grasp, the magic he wove into it humming in anticipation; spells of destruction, spells of force, all designed to imitate the crashing blows that the real hammer delivers, all coded to obey only him. "Stay behind me!"

"What? No!"

"Jane!" he yells in exasperation as she pushes in front of him. The fool woman will get herself killed; Loki has no illusions about the kind of beings the Other would send to collect him. "Get back!"

He grabs Jane by the shoulder and flings her back just as the portal's energy strikes the ground, spitting up dust and lightning in its wake. Loki spins around and shields them both with his back, momentarily grateful to have borrowed Thor's broad shoulders.

Because of this, he is faced away from the landing site, and only has Jane's widening eyes as a warning before he hears the buzzing of lightning sparking from the elaborate runes inscribed on Thor's armor. Not the Chitauri after all, but the Bifröst. Loki turns, dreading what he knows he will see. 

The Thunderer, standing tall and menacing before him, backlit by the storm. Loki has memorized this stance, has seen Thor stand thus in front of Dökkálfar battalions and Jötun warriors before taking them down with one mighty blow of his hammer. Loki's instincts scream at him to quail, to beg mercy, but he keeps his spine straight and refuses to bow to his fears.

"Well," Loki says, letting his usual sarcastic drawl bleed through. " _This_ is awkward."

"Jane?" Thor asks, his brow furrowed and thunder growing behind his eyes. "What trickery is this?"

"I _knew_ it," she whispers, her tone tilting between fright and conviction, and Loki looks around to see her edging away from him, toward Thor. Irritation surges through him, briefly, but he quells it, his mind racing. He will have to play this very carefully indeed if he wishes to salvage the sad scraps of his previous plan. "I knew there was something wrong with you!"

"How dare you imitate me!" Thor roars. His fingers flex on Mjölnir's shaft. "Show yourself!"

Loki's eyes flick from Thor to Jane and back again, and he shrugs.

"Very well," he says lazily, as if conceding to a child's requests for a game, and holds out his arms, letting the illusion melt from his skin. All around him, mortal soldiers shout and squeal and lock their sights upon him, but Loki only has eyes for Thor and Jane.

"Loki!" Thor goes rigid, steps forward, falls back. The bewildered look on his face borders on comedic. "What - why are you here?"

"I see those gates to Hel didn't trouble you overmuch," Loki says conversationally. "Such a pity. I opened them just for you."

" _You_ did? The hel-hounds nearly demolished Idunn's entire crop!" Thor shouts. "It could have meant death for all the Æsir!"

"Yes, Thor, I do know that. Do you expect me to mourn?"

Thor clenches his jaw, and Loki bares his teeth in a grin. Jane takes half a step back, and Loki is pleased to see fear lurking in her eyes. 

"Has he caused you harm?" Thor asks her, taking his eyes off Loki, and Loki notes with some surprise how low the volume of his voice has become; it seems he's learned to stop shouting when among polite company.

"No," Jane says. "No, he hasn't. He - " She stops, staring at Loki. He arches an eyebrow at her, and she frowns. "He's been really helpful."

"As was my only intention," Loki interjects. They both look doubtful. Loki spreads his hands imploringly. "When your magic first made itself known, Jane, I sensed it, as did every living sorcerer in all the realms. I came here to see what manner of person had been gifted with it, and when I saw it was you…"

Loki clasps his hands before him, and finishes, "I chose to stay by your side."

Jane is shaking her head.

"Then why the act, why the disguise?" she demands. "I would have at least heard you out if you had just asked me!"

Loki rolls his eyes, and quotes, "'No way, I'm not letting him within a hundred feet of me'." 

Jane's face goes a fiery red. He allows himself a small smile. "Had I so much as breathed my name in your presence, you would have had me clapped in chains." Or incinerated him with her own magic, but Loki thinks it wise not to mention it. "Jane, I meant you no harm. I still don't. All I desired was to be your guide to the magical arts. To give you what knowledge I have so you could work wonders of your own."

Jane breaks his gaze, and Loki worries that he's been too extravagant with his praise.

"You've helped me already," she repeats, biting her lower lip. "And what you said before, when you asked me if…"

Her voice trails off, and Loki completes her thought, unable to keep a sarcastic twist from his voice. "If you would ever deign to study at my side?"

"If you gave your word not to hurt me," she says, and stops. Thor's big hand comes down on her shoulder, and he whispers something in her ear. Jane listens intently, and Loki knows that his window of opportunity is rapidly closing. He _cannot_ let her slip through his fingers!

"I so swear," he promises, risking everything and well aware of it. "I give you my oath, Jane Foster, that I will do you no harm."

"Nor let any be done to her," Thor rumbles.

"Yes, that too," Loki agrees, doing his best to not roll his eyes again. "My oath that I will protect you from harm." He extends his hand. "Come with me, Jane."

"Do _not_ do it, Dr. Foster!" some S.H.I.E.L.D. peon shouts, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Do not engage! I repeat, do not engage!"

"Jane," Loki says softly. Still she hesistates. "I gave you my word."

Still nothing. Thor stands still as a carven figurehead behind her. Loki swallows hard.

"Please."

Jane sucks in a deep breath, and catches Loki's eyes. He inclines his head to her slightly, and tension settles in her shoulders as she makes her decision. Loki waits, holding himself very still.

"You better be telling the truth!" she finally says in a rush, and sprints to Loki's side as the air erupts with gunfire and shouting. As soon as her hand slides into his, Loki rips a hole between realms as wide as he can and thrusts them both through in a shock of green, and as they fall, and fall, down a tunnel striped with blazing violet, Loki clutches Jane tight, ignores his instincts, and trusts in her magic to lead their way.


	3. Seiðkona

_The choice is yours, Jane._

Thor's words echo in her ears as she spins out of control, fragmenting into a thousand pieces. The pressure builds in her chest and her head until something gives, and a shock of vibrant pain racks her body. Jane presses her face against Loki's chest and screams.

_He has never broken his word; though he is yet mad, he is my brother._

Screaming, screaming, and Loki's grip on her is tight enough to crack ribs.

_I trust your judgement. If you believe you should go, then go!_

And Jane went, she had reached out and taken the hand of a maniac who's proven to be not only a liar and a sneak but a _genocidal warlord_ , and now he's flung them both into some awful abyss and Jane is convinced they're going to die here. Why did she even agree to this, is she completely _crazy?_

With a jerky shift of color and light she isn't prepared for in the slightest, the wildly spiraling violet-and-black maelstrom spits them out, and they plummet down to a grassy plain at lightning speed. Jane tries to look, but the force of the wind is blinding and only rips tears from her eyes. Loki's mouth is moving against her cheek, like he's expecting her to magically read his lips or something, and then he pushes her away from him violently as they hurtle toward the ground.

Loki lands catlike in a crouched position, slapping the ground and rolling with the momentum of the drop. Jane, on the other hand, barely remembers not to keep her knees locked and crumples as soon as she hits, stinging pain shooting up her legs, the impact knocking the wind out of her. She scrabbles at the grass for a moment, trying to catch her breath, and flails when Loki grabs her by the shoulders and rolls her onto her back. He's doing that miming thing again, and Jane wants to smack him for it.

"Use your words!" Jane shouts, and then nearly screams because she can't _hear_ , she can't hear herself talk, and panic floods through her system. "What did you do to me?"

Loki grabs her face in between his palms, keeping her steady, and forces her to look at him. He's saying her name, she thinks, calmly and clearly, holding her gaze, but it's the complete composure in his eyes that quiets her more than anything. Once he's satisfied she's not going to fight him anymore, he slides his hands around to cup her ears, and heat surges briefly at the sides of her head; she can see green light just faintly in her peripheral vision. Loki pulls his hands away and sits back on his heels.

"Can you hear me?" he asks her. His voice is just as composed as his expression was, with the tiniest bite of what she thinks might be exasperation.

"Yeah," Jane says, flushing slightly. She touches her ear and feels wetness there; when she looks at her fingers, they're dabbed with blood. "Thanks. What happened?"

"You failed to compensate for the pressure shifts in the Paths Between," he says, unfolding his legs and standing gracefully. So does Jane, though she's a lot more wobbly.

"Was I supposed to do that?" she asks, feeling a little guilty. "I didn't hurt you too, did I?"

"No." He gives her an odd look. "You should have protected yourself, though; even the greenest sorcerers can manage that." Tilting his head back, he gazes at the sky contemplatively. "It does explain your, ah," he sketches the path of their fall with one finger, "interesting method of decent."

"Well, it's not like I'm a parkour master or anything," she defends herself, and bends her neck to look at the dark sky above them. All of her faint irritation collapses, and her breath catches in her throat.

The stars are _different_. New, unfamiliar constellations are scattered across the night sky, and there are thousands more stars, millions more, than she's ever seen on Earth. Arcing above their heads is a golden band of hazy light, mottled with dark patches, blending into faint shades of blue at the edges. Jane's jaw drops.

"Where are we?" she whispers, amazed.

"Álfheim," Loki answers shortly. Jane tears her eyes away from the sky for a moment to glance at him; he's frowning over what looks to be a holographic map in his hands. "Of all the realms, it is the least prone to violence and most accepting of magic. We should be safe here for now."

 _For now?_ Jane mouths, but decides against asking him to clarify right now. She looks up at the sky again. The golden band can only be Álfheim's parent galaxy, several degrees thicker than the Milky Way but equally as bright. Jane's hungry eyes take it all in, then skip to the strange constellations, darting around. She can hypothesize possible groupings of asterisms, but she doesn't have the slightest idea of what shapes the native people might have assigned to them. Her hands are itching for a telescope.

"Wow," she says finally. She runs her hands through her hair, and laughs a little, dazed. "Just wow. This is - I'm on a different planet. I'm in a different galaxy!" She jabs her finger at the sky for emphasis. "This is _amazing!_ "

"I show you how to walk between worlds and you're excited by the stars," Loki says dryly. "Why am I not surprised?"

Jane almost forgot about him, honestly. She jumps a little and turns toward him, only to see him standing there with his arms crossed and a wry expression on his face.

"What do you know about local astronomy?" she asks. "Anything about the development of the galaxy or about the solar system? Even anthropological stuff! Where are we on the planet, anyway? Is this the southern or northern hemisphere?"

Jane snaps her jaw shut; she's babbling. It amuses Loki, at least; he's gracing her with an expression that's too mocking to be a smile, but too gentle to rightfully be called a smirk.

"I appreciate your enthusiasm," he says, and offers her his arm. "Come. I'll answer all the questions you have on our way. Just you wait until the moons rise."

"Moons?" Jane says, thrilled by the thought, and without really thinking about it, she takes his arm.

"Three of them," he tells her, and guides her into the trees she hadn't noticed before. "The moon-priests inhabit the brightest, Ártala, and from there they chart the positions of the stars to foretell the future."

"So astrology exists here too, huh?" She snorts under her breath.

"Mortals may be unable to master even the most basic divination, but that doesn't mean the practice is useless," Loki says with a prim sniff. Jane rolls her eyes. "Many of the Ljósálfar draw their power from starlight; it's one of the reasons we came here, instead of Vanaheim."

"The Leo - "

"Light elves," he clarifies quickly, wincing a little in preparation for her to butcher his language.

"I know what they are," Jane points out. "I did my research. I just didn't think - "

"What?"

Now it's Jane's turn to wince. "That they were real."

Loki laughs out loud. Jane knew she sounded stupid. "Gods walk among you and you carry magic in your veins, yet it never occurred to you to believe in elves?"

"Well, I've never met any!" Loki, as Jane is rapidly discovering, has a way of making her feel like the dumbest person who's ever lived without actually insulting her outright. It's all in the tone. "A good scientist only believes what she can verify."

"Very true, and it's a good belief to keep, if you wish to be a terrible sorceress," he says, and pulls her to a stop. Jane looks around; they're just in the middle of the woods, at a wide part of the pathway that maybe could be called a clearing if she was feeling generous. "Magic has little to do with the scientific method; the sooner you embrace that, the better. We'll stop here for tonight."

"Here?" she says doubtfully. "Why here?"

"Because I said so, and you're just a tourist," he informs her, and Jane feels the barest hint of magic in the air before Loki pulls a leather pack that could have come from the set of _Lord of the Rings_ out of nowhere in particular.

"How do you even know what tourists are?" she asks, watching him with fascination as he sets up a tent without moving from his seated position.

"It's not a concept unique to Midgard, you know."

"I guess not." Jane slumps against a tree and watches Loki work. He has an interesting look, all long and slim with narrow, sharp features, handsome in an odd way. She thinks he'd be a good life model or something. "Can I help?"

"No."

Well, that was emphatic. Loki seems to realize this, and glances up at her.

"If you climb a tree, you'll be able to see the moons," he says, nodding at the leafy boughs above them.

"Yeah, good idea," she decides, and stands up, eyeing the tree she'd been leaning on with a professional's eye. When she was a kid, Jane drove her parents nuts clambering up trees like a monkey, usually for this exact purpose: the sky always looks best from high up. These trees aren't like the ones she's used to, but Jane figures she can manage; it looks sturdy enough. With a jump, she catches onto the tree's lowest limb, and pulls herself up, the muscles in her arms and stomach complaining vociferously.

"It's been way too long since I've done this," she mutters, but she scales the tree anyway, finally resting in its crown of branches, high above the rest. From here, she can see the moons, three gorgeous silver-gold globes hanging in the sky. The lowest one gleams the brightest; it must be Ártala.

"Where the moon-priests live," she whispers, and smiles. She's in awe at how delicately the moons and planet must be balanced for all of them to revolve in such perfect synchrony; talk about intelligent design. She'll have to ask Loki about magical physics tomorrow.

Inadvertently, she glances down to the forest floor. Loki is watching her, a shadowy form with pale eyes glittering in the light of the moons. She waves to him, and he ducks his head, disappearing into the tent.

Jane is pretty sure this was a bad idea. Loki is an unknown quantity, and she's not stupid enough to think he's doing this out of the goodness of his heart, plus there's the crazy megalomaniac problem. But she hasn't gotten this far in life by playing it safe.

 _Besides_ , Jane thinks, looking out at the sea of strange stars and glowing moons, _just look at the view._

****

. . .

Doing magic, as Jane soon finds out, is much more difficult than simply willing her magic to do what she wants it to do. As the days go by, she improves drastically, but she insists on trying spells beyond her level of ability nonetheless. After the first few times he denies her, Loki acquiesces, choosing a deceptively simple spell.

He takes her through the woods to a spot far away from the campsite, and bids her to sit. The clearing is small, as most are in these woods, caught in a patch of sunlight filtered through the canopy of leaves above them.

"To gain control of the wind," Loki tells her, taking on a lecturing tone he associates with his childhood tutors, "follow your instinct, and take care to note the flow of the air around you. All you need to do is draw your magic through your core, and - "

Though he's done this spell a thousand times or more, he pauses for effect, snaps his fingers, and around them the wind rises in a swirl, rippling through the trees. The leaves above tremble, casting dappled patterns on Jane's skin.

"It's easy," he finishes. Folding his hands in his lap, he nods at her. "Now call the wind, just like I did."

"Okay," she says, and bites her lip, extending her hand. Her control over her magic is good, but she lacks subtlety; Loki can feel it building in the air, and her veins glow faintly violet under her skin. She snaps her fingers, and the magic fizzles out. Loki stifles a sigh.

"You needn't snap," he says patiently. "As I said, follow your instincts. Do what feels right to you."

"Yeah, okay," she says, shaking out her hand. She gives him a little smile, and holds both hands out in front of her. "Take two."

 _Two of what?_ Loki wonders, before dismissing it as a Midgardian neologism he has no need to know. He focuses on Jane, whose magic is electrifying the air; Loki carefully draws a shielding spell around his shoulders, just in case she accidentally explodes. Eyes closed, she exhales slowly, then swiftly sweeps her hands in front of her. A mighty gust of wind whips through the air in response, tossing leaves everywhere.

"I did it!" Jane says, delighted, and Loki nods, plucking a small oak leaf from his hair.

"So you did," he says. "Now, let's try it again, but perhaps a little less vigorously this time."

"Yeah," she says wryly. "I need to work on my control. It's just so much to deal with, I can't keep it all straight. I can either keep it contained but totally unpredictable, or I can direct it but not contain it. Did you ever have that problem?"

Loki listens carefully, frowning a little.

"No," he says after a moment. "I'm not entirely sure what would cause that; the two should go hand-in-hand." He taps his finger against his lower lip, thinking, and sighs.

"Perhaps I'm pushing you too quickly," he says. "We need to start at the beginning."

Jane makes a face, but says, "I wouldn't start a kid off on astrophysics, either."

"Precisely," Loki says. He considers where to start. Telling her about the seven channels of magic would be the most immediate need, but…

"Have you seen your core, yet?" he asks her, realizing they hadn't discussed this at all.

"My what?" 

"Your magical core. It can be any place: a structure, a landscape..." Nothingness. "I imagine you have; I can't think of how you could access your magic without it."

Tentatively, Jane says, "I think I remember something when it first hit me, but I'm not sure."

"If you spend more time there, I expect you'll become more familiar with the ebb and flow of your power." He glances at the sky, noting how low the sun has sunk; he's lost track of time. "Mortals still practice meditation, do they not?"

"Yes, of course. I don't really do it, but - "

"Well, you'll start now, then, won't you?"

Loki has no doubt she glares at him as he walks away, but long acquaintance with Sif has inured him to the sensation of women sneering at his back. His brusqueness is not, perhaps, the best way to gain Jane's full-fledged friendship, but he has a meeting of some urgency, and the lady in question does not like to be kept waiting.

A good distance away, far enough to be out of Jane's sight, he stops, and takes a small bottle of clear water from his belt. He uncorks it, then nips the pad of his littlest finger hard enough to draw blood, and drips a fat red drop in the water; it steams, and fades into a calm green the color of young grass. Not his magic, no, but that of the Enchantress, the only other sorcerer he willingly will call his equal.

Loki flings the water into the air, waving his arm in an arc, and speaks a single word. The water freezes, becoming like ice, like glass, until he can see into another realm as clearly as if he'd gone there himself. He waits patiently until Amora deigns to notice him, ignoring her petty games.

"Loki," she says with a sultry smile as she peers into her scrying pool. "I thought you'd abandoned me for sad little Jane Foster."

"I do apologize for my tardiness," he says courteously. "You look lovely, Amora."

She preens, as she always does, and he continues, still perfectly pleasant but with a biting edge to his words, "I assume you have information on the matter I asked you to look into by now, surely?"

"So sharp!" Amora coos. "Did I offend you, bringing up your mortal girl? There's no need to be ashamed, Loki; she is _very_ pretty."

"It matters not," Loki says with a dismissive wave of his hand, though her comment rankles. "I asked for your aid and you promised to grant it. Have you made any progress?"

She holds his gaze for a long moment, then drops the act as much as she ever does, adopting a businesslike tone.

"I have not uncovered the secret of Jane Foster's magic, nor where it came from," she says, spitting Jane's name like it rotted in her mouth. Amora was no more fond of Thor's flirtations with her than Loki was, albeit for very different reasons. "Nor, for that matter, a way for you to obtain it."

"How very useful you've been," Loki comments, his lip curling.

"I'm not finished," she snaps. "Would you like to hear the rest, or do you want to complain about my methods some more?"

"The rest, by all means."

"I thought so." Amora leans back and eyes him speculatively. "Have you ever heard of a creature called the Teller?"

Loki goes very still. "I've heard the legends. All myths, surely?"

"My source says otherwise," Amora says. "He knows how to summon it. Shall I tell you?"

"What will it cost me?"

Amora says nothing for a moment.

"Consider it a gift," she finally tells him. "The way is dangerous. I wouldn't attempt it, myself. But for you, I imagine that's a draw as much as a disadvantage."

"You know me so well." He leans forward. "Tell me."

She holds up her hand, and plucks what looks to be a piece of parchment from the air.

"Here," she says, and drops it in the scrying pool. It sinks through the water and out Loki's window, fluttering in the wind; when he picks it up, it dissolves, sinking into his skin.

"Thank you," he says, sensing the new knowledge in the back of his mind.

"Don't mention it," she says. Her eyes narrow. "And if this pans out, don't forget you owe me. Twice, now, I believe."

Loki casts his eyes down, remembering Amora's quick fingers picking the lock to his cell, freeing his mouth from the gag, forcing potions and spells down his throat to chase the staff's influence from his skull and knit his mad mind back together. A favor for a favor, she had claimed, and Loki had sworn to repay her for the price of his freedom and his sanity.

"I remember," he says, his voice quieter than he likes.

"Good." She gave him a brief nod and a true smile, a rare sight on her face. "Farewell, Loki."

"Farewell."

She dips her fingers in the pool, and her image shimmers away; the water making up his window splashes to the ground. Loki stands there, head tilted in thought.

"So, what is it?"

He jumps, and spins around to face Jane, who is staring at him with those dark eyes.

"What is what?" he asks, biting back a flash of anger at her spying, unsure of how much she had heard.

"This Teller thing," she says, gesturing to the water soaking into the soil. "I only heard that last bit - " Loki gives her a hard look, and she blushes, but plunges gamely forward. "But it sounds interesting, like some sort of fortune teller."

"Not quite," he says, watching her closely. If she overheard that much, then she was present for the end of the conversation, too; he cannot believe her curiosity will let Amora's final words fall by the wayside. "It is a prophet, a seer. Some say it is all that remains of the eldest Norn, who sacrificed herself to black magic in search of power greater than one being can hold. Others believe it is a creature from the primordial void, Ginnungagap, and knows more than the fates who watch over Urd's Well."

"And you want to find it," she finishes. "What for?"

"Aren't you curious about from whence your magic came?"

Jane's mouth forms a little O, and she nods.

"I see," she says, and nothing else. They stand there, Loki silhouetted by the dying light, watching the thoughts flicker across Jane's face. She is so transparent, so easy to read; Loki wonders how easily she would succumb to his lies, his seductions.

"It would be an adventure," he offers finally.

"No," she says immediately. He blinks in surprise, and she gives him a fierce little grin. "It'll be a _quest_. I've been waiting for one of those!"

Try as he might, Loki can't convince her to explain the difference between an adventure and a quest in any way that makes sense to him, but he does like the way she laughs as she tries.

****

. . .

Before they leave, Jane shows Loki her magical core.

"If ever I need to direct your magic for you, I'll need to know the layout of the place," he tells her when she demurs. Part of him flinches at that, his conscience pointing out that such an invasion is hardly necessary for any occasion, but Loki, very used to ignoring his moral quibbles for the sake of his curiosity, pays it no mind.

"Well…" Jane glances away, then back to him, discomfited. Loki sits still and does his best to look trustworthy. "Okay, I guess. How do we do this?"

"Just as you would any other time," he says. "But I'll be coming with you. As long as you don't fight me, I should have no problem." He holds his hands out to her. "Contact is needed to maintain the bond."

But she doesn't take his hands.

"I have a condition," she announces instead.

"Oh?"

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

Loki hesitates, thinking of the endless black expanse inside him, the absence of substance; he thinks of Jane in there, lost, and knows that she could be no danger to him, but he could be one to her.

No. He trusts in his ability to protect her from himself, and vice versa if need be.

"Very well," he says with a sigh. "You first."

She takes his hands, her small fingers warm and fragile in his, and shuts her eyes. Loki watches as her posture straightens, her shoulders loosening, her brow relaxing. She slips into a meditative state with the same determination she does everything, and after a moment, Loki closes his eyes, matching his breathing to hers. Inhale, exhale, inhale…

Exhale, and he stands hand-in-hand with Jane on a marble plinth, frozen. This place - down to the very layout of the walls, it mimics his old core, the primitive stone circle that formed an elaborate runic pattern around the very center of his magic. Here, the walls are low, and surrounded by creeping vines rather than the pine forest of his mind, but it is the same.

"Not possible," he says in a low voice. Each sorcerer's core is entirely unique to him, and even among twins and the closest of friends or lovers, such resemblance is unheard of.

"Sorry, I missed that," Jane says, looking at him questioningly.

"It was nothing," he manages, still reeling. She gives his hand a quick squeeze, and he glances down to where their fingers are interlinked.

"Are you sure?" she asks, not taking her eyes from his face. It's disconcerting. Loki smiles and nods, and clenches his other hand tight enough to leave half-moon nail marks in his palm.

"Of course," he says, unlacing their fingers and stepping from the plinth. He looks around at the labyrinth she has created, trying to ignore the unsettling familiarity. The sky above is dark and dotted with stars, a huge full moon casting light over them all, nearly as bright as the day. If he focuses, he can see the strands of her violet magic twining around the walls and vines, strung among the stars.

"It's my old memory palace," Jane says. At his inquiring look, she adds, "It's a mnemonic device I used in college. I mean, it's a lot bigger, but its base pattern is the same."

"Is it?" he asks distractedly, thinking of that pattern. "Was the labyrinth part of your…memory palace?"

"Oh, no, that came when the magic did."

Magic carves its own core from the heart of the sorcerer, usually with influence from their mind, but not always. He crouches to touch the stone of the wall, and feels her magic hum in response to his. Loki is intrigued. Slightly alarmed, yes, but intrigued. From his crouched position, he glances up to where Jane still stands on the plinth, and narrows his eyes, considering. There looks to be an engraving in its marble.

He moves to kneel at Jane's feet, earning a startled half-chuckle and a "What?" before she sees what caught his eye. 

"Whoa," she says as Loki traces the soaring branches of Yggdrasil, etched in Jane's core as surely as it is etched in her skin. "This has to be significant. Right?"

"It looks like my suspicions are correct," he murmurs, thoughtful. He had guessed as much when they fled Midgard, and Jane's magic had guided them so accurately. Loki does so like to have his cleverness reaffirmed. "This is where your true talents lie, as mine do in illusion."

"Travel?" Jane asks, comprehension dawning. He gives her a sideways glance, unwilling to take his eyes completely from the emblem of the World Tree, and sees enthusiasm blooming in her eyes.

"World-walking," Loki corrects. He stands, brushing off his knees. "You'll do it instinctively; I doubt you'll even need lessons."

"Wow," Jane whispers, still kneeling. Her eyes are blank, her mind focused on the all the possible paths inside her head. "Wow."

Loki lets her have her moment, then taps her on the head.

"Come," he says. "We've tarried here long enough."

"Yeah, and it's your turn, now," she reminds him. "This should be interesting."

Loki had rather hoped she would forget. He makes a half-hearted attempt to deflect it, well aware of Jane's persistence when she wants to know something: "Later, perhaps. I can't imagine it being necessary now."

"Nice try," she laughs. "Should we wake up first, or can we go now?"

Loki considers weaving an illusion to fool her, but dismisses it; there is far too much risk involved with casting spells of trickery this close to a powerful sorcerer's untamed magic.

"Now, I suppose," he says, resigned. "Take my arm."

She does, and Loki closes his eyes, looks deep within himself, and throws them both down - and down, and down, until he opens his eyes on a space blacker than death itself. It is strange, beyond strange, having someone here with him, and Loki struggles with the instinct to cast out the intruder, protect himself from invasion -

"This is good," he tells his magic, coaxing the dark, snakelike wraiths away from Jane's trembling body. "This is fine, not like before, she is allowed here."

_A friend?_

"Something like it, I suppose," he agrees. His magic withdraws slightly, and begins to envelop them in its shining green light.

Jane clutches at his arm as she feels its touch, burrowing against his side. Belatedly, Loki realizes his oversight, and wills her sight, speech, and hearing to be returned to her. Her blank eyes clear, and she gasps, shuddering.

"Oh my god," she says in a rush. "Oh my god, Loki, that's awful. What happened?" She twists to look at him, and at the sight of his expression, she whispers, "Loki, is that _you?_ "

"So it is," he says, taking a mean sort of pleasure at the horror on her face.

"It's so - " She falls silent. 

"Empty?" Loki offers.

She glances up at him. "Dark. Alone. Has it always been like that?"

"Yes," he lies. He doesn't care for the note of pity in her voice. "As long as I can remember."

Jane opens her mouth, shuts it again.

"Explains much, does it not?" he can't help but say, his tone flippant, but his throat feels tight. She shrugs.

"Let's leave," she suggests in a tiny voice. Loki rages, suddenly, terribly, and barely contains it to a painful fire in his chest. If Jane Foster finds him so frightening, Loki would like to introduce her to real terror.

"Of course," he says instead. "Let us do so at once."

He wakes them forcibly, and opens his eyes on their forest in Álfheim. Beside him, Jane retches, and he watches her detachedly. He had been too abrupt with their exit; she isn't accustomed to moving between inner and outer worlds like he is.

Inside his mind, he can feel the sickly blue glow of the Chitauri's staff stretching grasping tendrils into his heart, taking his rage, his sorrows, and swelling them until they threaten to blot out his more rational self. Amora had taught him tricks to fight it, she being the expert of mind-altering magic in all the Nine Realms, and Loki had wielded them with skill, chasing the Chitauri's influence from his weakened mind. Now, Loki fends it off easily, though not quite as easily as one would hope. This attack is too unexpected, too vicious.

One of those tricks, Loki now recalls, was to forbid any others from entering his mind, lest they spark the Chitauri's latent magic. If it has indeed been activated…

This, Loki suspects, could become a problem.


	4. Sleep Paralysis

They take the Hel-Road to Niflheim, and for the first time since the star came to her, Jane channels true power. Everything she's done in the past few months involved magic, of course, and lots of time and patience, but this is something different. This is what she is _meant_ to do. Holding out her hand, Jane concentrates, her eyes shut and her vision clear. Through a parting of the fabric between the Void and where she stands in Álfheim, she sees their path stretching before them, an immense, knotted branch so wide she can only see the horizon and not the empty space below.

"Ready?" she asks, eyes still closed.

"I am," says Loki, after a beat. He's hesitant about this - not that she can blame him, it's not like she has much practice - but the only route he knows to Niflheim is long and indirect, cutting through three other realms, and for some reason Loki insists that time is of the essence. Jane's a little worried by his urgency, but he hasn't led her astray so far. Taking a deep breath, she takes her first step onto the branches of the World Ash, and into the Paths Between. The scar on her back burns, a swerving pattern of heat straight down her spine, and Jane gasps.

"Where to?" Loki inquires from behind her.

"Down," she says. "Down the trunk of the Tree. Uh, you don't happen to know what we're going to find down there, do you?"

"I've read some accounts," Loki says darkly. "I have no particular wish to see for myself. But if we seek the Teller, we must go to Niflheim."

The journey isn't literally down, no more than there is an up or down in deep space. The Tree, as Jane thinks of it, is more like a group of planes, intersecting at various angles; their minds only interpret it as a tree, for lack of any other frame of reference. Once they switch from this plane to what she's been calling the trunk plane, their world will spin, and what they perceive as a sheer, vertical cliff will suddenly become solid ground. Jane's kind of looking forward to it.

The darkness is unforgiving, a shade so totally absent of color that it's not even black. Jane knows that's impossible, but she sees it all around, and even the purple flame she summons does little to cut through the gloom.

"There's no use," Loki says, nodding at her makeshift lamp, the little flame bobbing in her palm. "The Void will swallow it all. You're only expending your energy."

"Yeah, I thought so," Jane says with a sigh, and extinguishes the flame with a shake of her hands. "It was worth a try." He really hates it here; Jane doesn't think she's heard him sound this on edge since - well, ever. It doesn't exactly fill her with confidence. But she knows what she's doing, and knows how to do it better than he does, too, so she keeps on trucking, putting one foot in front of the other on the branch, obscured by darkness. There's not much else to do, anyway.

"Eigengrau," she says, breaking the silence. "That's what this reminds me of."

"Care to clarify?"

"It's a German word," Jane explains. "I learned it from this guy I dated back in undergrad. He was a linguistics major, and he had this notebook of weird words from all sorts of languages that he carried around everywhere. It means brain grey, the color you see when you're in absolute darkness."

"I see," Loki says. "Not particularly accurate, but apt." He falls silent for a while - Jane is having a hard time guessing just how long it's been since they left, or since he last spoke - and then, just as Jane is opening her mouth to say something else, he continues, "Do you see him often, this linguist of yours?"

Jane snorts. "No, definitely not. I haven't heard anything about him since we broke up. He wasn't the nicest guy once you got to know him." She sighs. "Neither was the boyfriend before him, or the one after. I have a type, I guess."

"Doubtlessly Thor broke your streak of bad choices," Loki points out, his voice unreadable. Jane turns to look at him, forgetting how futile that is, and smacks right into his chest.

"Sorry!" she says, and takes a hurried step back. "It's just dark."

"Surely you jest," Loki drawls, and though she can't see him, she bets he has one hand pressed over his heart like the diva he is. "I hadn't noticed. I thank you most wholeheartedly for warning me."

"Oh, come on!" Jane says, but she's laughing and can't really hold the indignation, feeble as it is. Loki bumps into her on his next step, and swears under his breath, putting his hand on the small of her back to keep them from tripping over each other. Suddenly, Jane thinks of that time in her trailer when he was still disguised as Thor, and the way he touched her back, tracing the lines of her scar. It felt sinfully good, she remembers, giving her goosebumps and making her blush, and now she's imagining Loki's hands on her, his real hands, not Thor's wide palms but Loki's slender fingers, and wow, this is really not a productive train of thought.

 _Genocidal warlord_ , she reminds herself, but her imagination takes a sharp veer into R-rated territory anyway, and she goes bright red, her cheeks heating.

"What are you thinking?" Loki asks into the silence, curious, his breath in her hair, and Jane jumps.

"Nothing," she squeaks. What is it about Norse gods that turns her back into a thirteen-year-old with her first crush? She's being ridiculous. Then she says, "I just realized I took my shirt off in front of you," and nearly facepalms.

"Oh, yes," he says, dropping his voice into a sultry purr laced with amusement, "I certainly remember that. How could I forget such a sight?"

"Oh my god," she says, mortified, and Loki laughs. "In all fairness, I thought you were Thor!"

Loki goes stiff at her side, and she can practically feel him forcing himself to relax. Quickly, she adds, "I mean, it's not like he hasn't seen me shirtless or anything." Silence at that. "Not that - I mean, we haven't even seen each other in a year and a half, so, you know…"

Loki shakes. For a moment, she's a little concerned, and then she realizes why.

"You're laughing at me, aren't you?"

Yeah, he is. Unable to contain himself, Loki bursts into snickers. 

"I'm sorry, Jane," he says, once he's more or less got control of himself again. "But your efforts at reassurance are frankly pathetic."

"Oh my god," Jane says again, and thinks about banging her head against the branch in embarrassment.

"Yes?" he asks, cheeky, and Jane covers her face with her hands. She has to admit, it's nice to hear him sound happy for a change; since they visited their mind palaces - magical cores, if she wants to be accurate - he's been swinging dramatically from the sardonic, unexpectedly likable trickster she's come to know, and the man she remembers from the news, fighting the Avengers while New York City burned. It frightens her a little. Jane doesn't know which one is the true Loki, if he's been hiding that evil all this time or if he really has changed. A dark streak is one thing, and she's not blind to that part of him, but that sort of unspeakable malice? That's why she was so vehement about not wanting to work with Loki. And just because she hasn't seen it yet doesn't mean it isn't there.

Jane rebels against that idea. She knows she isn't the greatest judge of character, as demonstrated by her string of asshole boyfriends, but she doesn't think she's ignorant enough to ignore something as big as hey, this guy you like is literally an evil villain.

"Can I ask you something?" she inquires.

"I can't stop you," he says with a shrug. 

Jane bites her lip and goes for it. "Do you ever think about what happened four years ago?"

Loki halts, and Jane's forced to stop, too, or risk getting separated.

"What are you asking me, Jane?" he wonders, his tone gone lightly cruel. Jane flinches in the darkness. "Do you wish to know if I recall the greatest defeat I have suffered in all my years? More likely you wonder if if I regret my actions. No, Jane, I do not."

"That's just sick," she says before she can stop herself. Loki chuckles. He doesn't sound too happy.

"Any sicker than the war machine your leaders fund, massacring millions while they smile and lie to their people? Sicker than the murders, robberies, rapes that happen every day, thousands at a time, all across your nation? Spare me your pathos. I came to Midgard with war at my heels, but with no falsehoods on my tongue."

"That is such bullshit," Jane snaps, surprising herself, and Loki too, judging by the way she feels him move, turning to look in her direction. "You're telling me that you actually thought you could save us by being a dictator?"

"I knew - " he begins haughtily, and Jane steamrolls right over him.

"When has that ever worked? You're a lot of things, Loki, but I never pegged you for stupid."

She can hear Loki breathing heavily, and finally he says, his voice strained, "You are clever for a mortal, Jane Foster, but do not delude yourself into thinking you can comprehend the ways of gods simply because you bedded one."

He shrugs off her hand and stalks ahead of her, leaving Jane standing stunned, angry and humiliated.

****

. . .

Loki clenches his jaw and fights it, feeling the weak blue light diminish and fade into embers in his mind. Were it mind control of the type he used on Barton and the rest, it would be easier to throw, but this is no such thing; it is much quieter, far more insidious, a magic that influences the mind rather than taking its reins. Before, it had taken his anger and jealousy of Thor and fanned those flames until, in his rage, taking over Midgard had seemed a rational thing to do; now, it takes those same feelings and turns them into weapons to use on Jane, as keen as the knives he carries. Jane, Thor's woman, who is so much more than that. Jane, whom he covets and whom, like so many things, he cannot have.

The staff's magic seizes his mounting jealousy and turns his mind toward his knives and how they would shine at Jane's throat, coaxing him to violence. Loki growls and throws it off. Behind him, he can hear Jane's muted footsteps, and he shuts his eyes. Everything looks exactly the same.

She asked him if he regretted what he had done. Loki told the truth when he said he did not, but as so many of his words are, it was still a half-lie: he regrets the idiocy of his plan; he loathes being trapped by the Chitauri's magic and his own weakened mind; he mourns the collateral damage of lives needlessly lost; but despite that, he can't find it in himself to truly regret the madness he had caused. He is a god of chaos, of mischief, of mayhem; wreaking havoc is in his nature. If he explains such to Jane, perhaps she would understand.

At his left shoulder, she touches his back lightly, and moves to stand by his side.

"I think we're almost there," she says. Her voice is cool, reserved.

"Then by all means, lead on," Loki replies, and she does, saying nothing, only just allowing him to stay abreast of her. Loki thinks of their laughter, just a short while ago, and aches.

Perhaps she wouldn't understand, after all.

****

. . .

As they near the trunk of the World Tree, the branch they walk narrows, and for the first time since Jane doused her flame, light shines through the darkness. He cannot measure how far they have to go, nor how far they've come, but he knows they will reach the end of their path soon. The light filters over the horizon, and Loki shields his eyes with one hand.

"Time doesn't flow here, does it?" Jane says thoughtfully, a total non-sequitur. "I feel like we've been walking for hours, but I'm not tired at all. I haven't even broken a sweat."

Loki thinks of hanging in the Void for a handful of minutes or a thousand centuries, surrounded by the grim darkness, plucked from its grasp only by the hand of the Other and the creature it serves.

"You're correct," Loki says, choosing not to share his thoughts. "Time has no meaning here. Rather, it doesn't exist at all."

"Huh," Jane says. Loki squints at her. In the dim light, she has the look of a scholar studying a new problem. "You know, I'm getting really tired of things breaking the laws of physics."

"Perhaps it's time to update your laws," Loki suggests, and she rolls her eyes at him.

"Yeah, but I'd need equations for that, at the very least," she points out. "And I don't have any."

"Yet."

She grins. "Yet."

They trudge on in companionable silence, Jane seeming to have granted him some kind of forgiveness, however temporary it may be. Loki is pathetically grateful for it, and loathes himself for such base sentiment.

_I don't know what happened on Earth to make you so soft! Don't tell me it was that woman?_

Loki winces at the memory, and steals a sidelong glance at Jane. He is loath to admit it, but now he can see the qualities in her that Thor found so striking and so inimitable. What puzzles him is what, precisely, a woman of her intellect could possibly see in Thor; she is not so shallow as to love him based on appearance alone. Loki is certain of that.

Abruptly, the light grows from a dim glow to unspeakable brilliance, and Loki flinches hard, raising his hand to block out the searing glare. Beside him, Jane is doing the same, but it only takes a scarce few seconds until the brightness draws back to a luminescence curling over the horizon - and then down, arcing along the trunk, sinking into the blackness to touch the very depths of the Void. Loki's skin crawls, and he peers deeper into the darkness, the blue flame burning in his mind, urging him to jump.

"Loki!"

Jane grabs him by the back of his surcoat and hauls him bodily away from the edge of the branch. Loki stumbles, and catches himself quickly, drawing away from the drop with hasty steps.

"Are you okay?" she asks, patting him as if soothing a skittish horse.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine," he stammers, and curses himself for his lack of grace. Jane looks at him with uncanny eyes, as if she can somehow see the distress churning in his mind.

"Are you sure?" she asks, concerned, taking his arm. Loki allows her to guide him back to the center of the branch, to the junction where it meets the trunk.

"Yes, I'm sure," he tells her, purposefully sharpening his tone to hide the breathiness in his voice. "Now, where do we go from here?"

Jane pauses, thinking, and Loki sees the slightest tinge of violet under her skin; she never quite managed the trick of casting magic without light.

"We just walk forward, I think," she says after a moment. They both look doubtfully at the Tree, solid and implacable. Finally, Jane shrugs.

"Well, here we go," she says, and steps forward, tugging him along.

Everything shifts as they pass through the bark into the Tree itself, and tilts sickeningly; Loki braces his feet and grits his teeth, Jane's fingers biting into his arm. After a moment, the world rights itself, and they stand on a length of wood much like the branch they came from, but woven out of grey-gold light: the trunk of Yggdrasil. For a long minute, they simply stare into the distance. Here at the heart of the universe, the world is more substantial than on the Paths Between, and Loki is suddenly, acutely aware of time snapping back into motion, all the little indignities of life reasserting themselves; sweat at his hairline, hunger in his stomach, an itching tiredness around his eyes.

"Our bodies are making up for lost time," Jane observes, glum. "Too bad. I was enjoying that."

Loki doesn't mind it; he prefers the reassurance that he still lives.

As they walk, that reassurance runs dry. Both of them tire, and while Loki is capable of going weeks without sleep, Jane has a fragile mortal constitution, and she will not stay upright and competent for much longer. Loki cares not for the thought of stopping, the dead stillness and shadows where the light bleeds away keeping him on edge, but he cannot ask her to fight her physiology, however inconvenient it may be.

"Jane," he says. She keeps walking, her brow furrowed, lost in thought. "Jane."

He touches her arm, and she jumps.

"Sorry," she says quickly. "I was thinking. What's up?"

"You need rest," he tells her. She frowns at him, and he cuts her off before she can speak. "Yes, you do. This place is safe enough for now - " He glances up and down the path as he speaks, ensuring they are still alone, " - and we have no way of telling how much longer we must go."

Jane glowers, apparently intending to argue, but yawns widely instead. Loki raises an eyebrow pointedly.

"Fine, fine," she grumbles. "You know, I didn't really take you for the…" She waves her hand in the air, searching for a word. "The maternal type."

"Maternal," Loki repeats flatly. He has no idea what expression he wears, but Jane seems to find it entertaining enough.

"Uh, nurturing," she elaborates, her face doing odd things as she tries not to laugh. "Taking care of someone. You know, 'eat your veggies and go to bed early'."

Loki stares at her in astonishment, wondering how any sentient creature could ever mistake him for such, and says carefully, "Sleep deprivation must be interfering with your reason."

She shakes her head, still with that bright, happy look in her eyes, and sits down in the middle of the path. Hesitantly, Loki lowers himself to the wood beside her, still eyeing her dubiously as she stretches out, pillowing her head on her arm.

"Not exactly the Ritz, but it'll do," she murmurs. Loki turns that over in his mind, remembering vaguely that a Ritz is some sort of mortal inn; one with a good reputation, he assumes.

Jane is exhausted; she drifts off to sleep with ease while Loki watches her, marveling at her trusting nature. He can count on one hand the number of beings who wouldn't think it unwise to be so vulnerable near him. Of course, he had sworn to protect her, those weeks ago; that oath may be the only reason for her careless confidence in him. The thought doesn't sit well with him.

Loki steadfastly ignores his discomfort. He may admit to some scraps of mawkishness where Jane is concerned, but he refuses to embrace them.

Folding his legs beneath him, Loki places his hands on his knees and straightens his posture. Though he is on edge, it takes him but minutes to sink into his meditative state, more rejuvenating than sleep. In the inky darkness, he floats, cradled by his magic. He had been wary of doing so, but the Chitauri's magic lies quiescent in his mind; little by little he relaxes, safe in his core, and then -

Then a searing blue light slices through his skull, and Loki hears the screeches and gleeful chatter of ten thousand mandibles, a savage chorus of celebration, and above it all, a voice: _No barren moon, no crevice, no realm nor grove we cannot find you, Asgardian -_

A woman is screaming. Pain sparks on his cheek, then again, and Loki twists away from grasping hands and lands flat on his back, wooden splinters beneath his nails from the branch he lies upon, lines gouged into the wood. His eyes open, and he comes back to himself. Immediately he chokes, and rolls on his side to spit blood from his mouth. His blood. He has nearly bitten his tongue in twain, thrashing in the grips of the vision, awakened only by -

Jane. Hastily, he sits upright, and stares at her. Brown eyes, not blue. Safe.

"Are you okay?" she asks tentatively, and Loki blinks, snapping back to himself.

"Yes. It was a nightmare, nothing else," he lies, his magic knitting his tongue back together before he speaks. She seems unharmed, and for that he is grateful; a tight knot inside him eases somewhat, though not much. "They can be…vivid, so close to the Void."

"Right," she replies, obviously unconvinced. 

Loki rolls his eyes, and berates her mysterious magic for choosing such an observant host. Clearing his throat, he intends to ask after the time, but instead touches his stinging face.

"Did you slap me?"

"You were having a seizure," she defends. "It wouldn't stop. I didn't know what else to do."

Loki very much doubts slapping someone is mortal protocol for dealing with fits, but decides to let that lie. "How long have we been here?" 

"I think it's been an hour or so. I feel rested, at least, so that's good."

"So it is." Loki stands, his body complaining; all his muscles had seized when the vision took him, and soreness remains. "We should continue."

"Maybe we shouldn't. You still seem a little shaky," Jane says, eyeing him with obvious concern. Loki is flattered, though the feeling is dim in light of his encounter with the Other.

"I am well," he assures her. "It was only a nightmare, as I said."

"A nightmare, right."

Loki wipes the rest of the blood off his face, and, frowning at it, rubs it off on the wood below him. Yggdrasil already has a taste of his blood; there is no harm in giving it more. He stands on steady legs, and is glad of it.

"Shall we?" he asks, and Jane shrugs, biting her lip.

"Guess so," she says, and so they go, walking the trunk of the World Tree to Niflheim. She takes his hand as they walk, squeezing a little too hard, as if searching for reassurance. Loki does not pull away.

****

. . .

The Hel-Road forks shortly thereafter, two identical paths stretching away in different directions. Had he been alone, Loki would have taken the left-hand path and hoped for the best, as he always does; his navigation of the Paths Between has always been by trial and error. With Jane, he need only wait for her word, watching her scrunched-up face as she thinks hard, and then she nods firmly, tugging him toward the right. Thankfully, she has been correct so far; his last visit to Hel had not been a particularly pleasant affair, and he has no desire to tangle with the Lady of the Dead once more.

From there, it is only a short way, as they perceive it. Niflheim enjoys having guests, especially ones with a history as sordid as Loki's, and the realm itself reaches out to them, pulling them into its embrace.

"The land of the dishonored dead," Loki murmurs. They step off the branch of the World Tree and into Niflheim proper, and the way disintegrates behind them, fading into the mist. Here it is cold enough that Jane shivers, and while the space is lit by an eerie white light like that of Midgard's moon, the fog is so thick it serves as well as the Void to blind them. Jane summons flame in her hand, the violet flame dancing through her fingers; the element comes naturally to her as water came to Loki. Musing on that, he calls a few droplets to his hand; they freeze instantly, leaving white frost on Loki's fingertips, and beneath that, a shade of blue.

Shaking his hand quickly, Loki calls forth fire with a little more effort, burning away the color of his hidden form. Loki has grown used to the truth of his heritage, in that he strives to ignore it as much as possible, yet he could not bear for Jane to see the proof. Bad enough that Asgard knows (that Thor knows); bad enough that _he_ knows. He has no wish to share further the disgrace of his birth.

"I don't see anything we're looking for," Jane says, jarring Loki from his thoughts. "Just - oh my god."

Shapes move in the fog, stumbling phantoms too insubstantial to do physical damage. So Loki had been told, the first time he ventured to Niflheim; he learned soon after the harm they could cause.

"The shades of the dead," he tells Jane in explanation. Narrowing her eyes, she feeds more power to the flame, and the specters fall away.

"Will the fire keep them away for long?" she asks quietly, and Loki shakes his head.

"It frightens them, but they forget their fear quickly," he says in the same low voice. "Better to find our destination now, lest they grow too bold."

"What can they do to us?"

Grimly, Loki says, "Have you heard of the mara?"

Jane shudders, and looks around at the shades. "Yeah. They're demons, right? It's where the word nightmare comes from."

"Now you have the pleasure of meeting them firsthand."

"Great," she mutters, and steps closer to his side. "I miss tossing fireballs around the desert."

"Do you?" he asks, glancing down at her. She smiles at him, though it is strained.

"Not a bit. The ghouls I could live without, though."

"Can't we all?"

Jane stops dead in her tracks again, jolting Loki to a standstill. She is frowning.

"Am I still supposed to navigate when we're off the Tree?" she inquires, thoughtful.

Intrigued, Loki says, "I have no idea. There is hardly a precedent." He touches her back lightly, running his fingers down the path of Yggdrasil twining its way down her spine, imagining the red lines interrupting her smooth skin. "I'll have to take another look when we're finished here."

Jane makes a strange coughing noise, and Loki notices with a sort of smug satisfaction the blush tinting her cheeks. Taking pity on her, he asks, "What did you feel?"

"We're supposed to go this way," she says, pushing aside her emotions and focusing on the task at hand, and points ahead and slightly to the left. The shades crowd around her hand, and she yanks it back, sending a burst of flame in their faces.

"Subtle," Loki says under his breath. Jane gives him a dirty look.

"Lead on, Master Sorcerer," she says with a roll of her eyes, gesturing for him to go ahead of her; Loki preens a little at the title, though he knows she gave it in sarcasm. Still, as the mortals say, it's the thought that counts.

She invited him to lead, but in truth neither of them do, choosing instead to stay close, shoulder to shoulder, a palmful of fire in Loki's left hand and a blaze of violet in Jane's right. The shades hiss and press ever closer; Loki grits his teeth and continues. Amora cautioned him to keep outsiders from his mind, and he fears what havoc the mara would wreak there. With the added pressure of the Chitauri's magic rising, he could very well break. Loki has felt nothing so terrible as the loss of his mind, his reasoning, his discipline. There is little he would not do to forsake a repeat of the experience.

Soon - very soon - the fog lifts, and with it the shades fade away. The tension in his body eases somewhat, and Jane nudges him with her elbow. He suspects it is meant to be encouraging. Moments later, the place they seek looms suddenly from the shadows, a massive stone building emerging where none was before. At the door, Loki hesitates, a feeling of foreboding rushing over him; he shrugs it off, as he usually does with such feelings, and follows Jane inside.

It is one huge stone chamber, its ceiling sweeping high and black above them, desiccated torches lining the walls. Jane flicks her fingers at one, lighting it aflame, and her violet fire skips from torch to torch, igniting oils and fabric millennia older than Loki.

"Now what?" Jane asks, her face oddly shadowed in the flickering light.

"You have led us here, and done it well; now, it's my turn." Loki flashes a grin at her and crouches, holding his hands in front of him, palm down, his fingers spread wide. Closing his eyes, he summons the instructions Amora had given him, and begins to carve out the spelled circle, mumbling the words as he goes. They are an old Norse dialect, perhaps even as ancient as this room, and only half familiar to Loki; he had not the time to study it, and the books that he needs would only have been in Asgard's library. Loki doubts he will set foot there again - unless, of course, he needs to steal a book for a task with no time constraints.

The circle is complete. Loki sits back on his heels, taking a moment to compose himself once more, then beckons for Jane, who had been watching, studying his every move. She kneels beside him, examining the circle thoughtfully.

"This is old magic, blood magic, isn't it?" she asks after a moment, and at Loki's look of surprise, she adds, "I pay more attention than you think I do."

"Yes," he says. He will have to remember that in the future. "A sacrifice is required to seal the circle, and then we may begin."

He draws one of his sleek knives from its sheath, tucked against his thigh, and slices his palm with it. Jane takes it from him, and says doubtfully, "Are you sure this is safe?"

Loki can't help but laugh at that. "Jane, this is magic. Nothing is truly safe."

Still she doesn't move, and Loki frowns. Surely she will not falter now, not when they have come so close to their goal?

Finally, she draws the blade swiftly across her palm, a shallower cut than his, and lets her blood drip on the stone. It hisses, heat flaring along the circumference of the circle, and Loki grabs Jane by the shoulder, pulling her away.

Heat rises, and rises, the stone chamber becoming painfully hot; dizziness momentarily overtakes Loki, and sweat breaks out on Jane's forehead and chin. Slowly, in the center of the ring, a shape is coalescing into being: something huge, bony, with exaggerated limbs and eyes that glow a harsh red-orange. Pallid grey skin, jointless, knifelike fingers, thick veins pulsing over its arms and torso. It pulls itself up from the Void whence it came with a slurping, sucking noise, and crouches, spiderlike, inside the circle. When it speaks, its voice is that of locusts' wings, of worms struggling in the muck, of the popping of leeches' flesh as a man tears them from his skin.

"What manner of creature summons the Teller?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loki is technically a fire god, but since he's a frost giant in Marvel canon, I figured it would make sense to have him more skilled at water, and therefore ice.
> 
> The Teller, as well as the inspiration for some dialogue in the next chapter, comes from _Journey Into Mystery_ #626.1.


	5. Wyrd's Web

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is brief violence in this chapter, of the PG-13 horror flick sort; not something that requires upping the rating, but different enough from the rest of the fic to warrant a note.

"We do." Jane's voice rings out, filling the stone chamber, and she rises from her knees. "We are - "

"Do not tell it our names!" Loki hisses. "Names have power."

"It supposedly knows everything," Jane whispers back. "Why not our names?"

"You are correct, Jane Foster, daughter of John and Elizabeth, once sister to Jessica," the Teller drones in a voice like offal. "But it is ritual to ask, and ritual matters."

The Teller oozes to the edge of the circle, and presses against it as if bound by glass, trapped. Emboldened, Loki rises, and moves to stand by Jane.

"Ritual matters, yes," he agrees smoothly. "We have followed every ritual, braved Niflheim and the shades of the mara, drawn your circle and baptized it with blood. Now you shall answer our questions."

The Teller laughs. Loki shudders, his skin crawling, and prays he will never have to hear such a sound again.

"You think you have the right to order me, Asgardian?" it asks, and laughs again. Jane gags, and Loki, with his hands clasped behind his back, bends one nail back until the pain eclipses his revulsion. "Very well. What would you know, Loki Giantblood?"

The kenning throws him; the words nearly slip his tongue, but he recovers them, and says, "I would know the origin of Jane Foster's magic."

"Would you, now?" The Teller turns its palm to the ceiling, sticky webs hanging from its rigid fingers. "A simple tale. Look and see."

In the space above its palm, the air clears to reveal utter blankness, utter nothingness: the Void. Then a spark of light, an immutable sense of permanence, of existence; Loki needs no Teller to know the seed of Yggdrasil. Jane creeps closer, fascinated, and so does Loki, despite his better judgement. The seed explodes, sending roots and branches into the Void, creating the realms and all the Paths Between.

"The Big Bang," Jane whispers, awe in her voice, a half-smile on her face.

"The next cycle," the Teller corrects. "So it was, so it will always be. Ragnarök comes, the Nine Realms fall, the World Ash is born anew, and with it comes all else: gods, giants, humans, eldritch creatures from places unknown." Yggdrasil unfolds, a process so swift, so beautiful, that Loki cannot keep his eyes on it. "But sometimes, the rebirth goes awry." There, in the branches where Asgard lies, a violet spark; Jane's magic. "A power is displaced, and abandoned, it waits in the deep to be claimed."

"And it chose me?" Jane asks, astonished. "Why?"

The Teller turns its hand over, and the shining image disappears. "Pure chance. You were there at the right time."

"And whose magic - " Jane begins, but Loki overrides her with a more urgent question.

"Why is my magic drawn to hers?" he asks, remembering the inescapable pull of her power aboard the space station, the bursts of energy colliding at their palms. "Why does it react so strongly?"

"Your questions differ, but the answer is the same. Look, and listen well."

Again the Teller opens its palm; again a shape forms in the space. Loki blinks, and leans in closer to be sure of his sight.

It is Loki, recognizably Loki, but not him. This Loki is thicker, more muscled, with fiery red hair and a madcap tilt to his smile unlike any Loki has worn while sane. Beside him is a woman, also familiar, blonde and blue-eyed, with the look of the Vanir about her.

"Sigyn Incantation-Fetter," the Teller says, just as Loki places her. "The goddess who bore the power that now lies in Jane Foster, once wife of Loki Scar-lip."

Jane jumps at that, Loki going very still, his mind whirling, and the Teller smiles, its face splitting open with a thousand teeth.

"Killed," it continues, "when her husband brought the twilight of the gods to the steps of the Shining Citadel, as he is fated to do, has always done, forever will do."

"What?" Loki gasps. "I bring - _Ragnarök?_ "

Odin must know - far-seeing Odin, and Frigga, weaving the future at her loom. This explains so much, even more than the truth of his breeding did.

He feels - he does not know what he feels. Dizzy, pained, his breath short, an ache in his chest that seems to consume him entire. He feels Jane grab his wrist, squeeze hard. Reassurance. Futile; without even wishing it, he will destroy her, too, in the end.

"So what does this mean?" Jane is asking, her voice impressively steady. "That we're - I don't know, soulmates?"

The disbelief in her voice is clear; the Teller shakes its head, an oddly human gesture.

"Souls are insubstantial," it says. "Immaterial. They fade and rot just as all life does. Power stays. That power which lies within Loki and the power which lies within you, Jane Foster, are twinned. It matters not whose flesh they inhabit; together they function as two halves of a whole. Throughout all of eternity, it has always been so."

This explains their matching cores. Loki would care if he weren't losing his mind. _Brought the twilight of the gods…as he is fated to do…_

"But I'm a mortal," Jane argues. "You know everything, right? Including the previous cycles. So was Sigyn's magic fated to come to me or not?"

The Teller pauses, and Loki has the impression it eyes Jane speculatively. Loki wants to shake her; nothing else matters. The world is doomed. He will fell Yggdrasil, he alone, and he will need no army, no Other, no Titan and his mistress of death to do it. He will bring doom as none could ever comprehend, and he discovers this now, long after he would have wanted that power in the first place.

Loki puts his head in his hands and laughs at the irony.   


"Fate is not so easily decided," the Teller says eventually. "Lives change, decisions are made - "

"So no, it wasn't. It was an accident," Jane says. Her voice is determined, the sound of a woman rapidly verifying her hypothesis. "And if that was an accident, then fate isn't - fated! Destiny is basically meaningless!" She smacks him in the arm. "Are you listening, Loki?"

"What?" he says dully, then his mind processes their conversation. Loki frowns, wretchedly hopeful but unable to believe; surely it can't be that simple?

"I think we're done here," Jane says decisively, and hauls him to his feet. Impressive, for such a small woman. Her magic must add to her strength. "Thank you for all your help!"

They make for the exit, and as they go, Loki realizes this is much too easy; there has to be a catch.

"There is still the matter of payment," the Teller says. Loki freezes. Ah, there it is. Slowly, he turns, shoving his burgeoning hysteria to the side. He is still capable of rationality, if only for Jane's sake.

"Payment, yes," Loki says, idle as if passing the time with a friend. "A story for a story, if I recall."

"A past for a future," the Teller corrects. Loki measures the distance from their position to the door, and judges it close enough to sprint. He nudges Jane, and feels her nod, rising on the balls of her feet in preparation to run.

"Yes, yes," Loki agrees. "A pity about that. You see, we're both quite fond of our futures - " Not actually true, but it does sound nice. " - and I'm afraid you cannot move from that circle, so if you'll excuse us - "

The Teller roars, the sound of bones breaking, of bodies bursting, foul fluids spurting from its skin as it ruptures in rage, and Loki spins, pushing Jane ahead of him as they run for the door. Flinging it open, Loki ducks away as the shades flood in, ants swarming over a corpse as they attack the Teller, and Jane grabs his hands.

"This way!" she yells, and pulls him through, onto a lesser branch of Yggdrasil, stumbling. She closes the portal behind them and falls, landing on her hands and knees just like Loki. They stare at each other. All at once, they both laugh, Jane pressing her hands to her mouth, Loki with his forehead against the wood.

"Wow!" she says. "Wow, that was - "

A flicker, a shift, and Loki screams as his core is sliced through with blue.

"I warned you we would find you, Asgardian," says the Other. He stands above them, swathed in black, a thousand chattering creatures behind him. He holds Loki's staff in his hands.

"Ah," Loki says faintly. Beside him, Jane squeaks; he is torn between comforting her and ordering her to shut up. In the end, he dares not do either. "Here to drag me to your master for a whipping, then?"

Flippancy has always been used by Loki as a cover for darker thoughts; inside, his schemes are shifting, breaking, reweaving, and something occurs to him. He stands.

"The Titan does not concern you," the Other snaps. Loki smiles, a chilling, knife-edged smile.

"Has he left you for greener pastures?" he asks. "The Skrulls, perhaps? I hear they rival the Chitauri in number and have twice their strength."

"Loki," Jane whispers. He does not look at her; the Other does.

"You have a human pet," he says, derisive. "Tend to her before we do."

"Of course," Loki says. He looks from Jane to the edge of the branch, so very close, from Jane to the staff, and makes several decisions at once. "I'm dreadfully sorry, Jane."

Her mouth opens, her eyes filling with something unnamable - fear? Hopeless pleas? Sorrow? - and Loki plants his foot in her side and shoves her off the edge, stepping close to watch her plummet into the deep.

"A wise choice," the Other says, and Loki turns. The point of the staff is leveled at his chest. "It is the last one you will ever make."

There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and no help is coming unless Jane survives and, even more unlikely, forgives him. Loki does not fight it; he looks into the glow of the staff, and lets his mind fill with blue.

****

. . .

Jane falls.

She falls, but it isn't falling so much as floating in something so endless it truly is incomprehensible. It's so much like that first time, when Loki swept her up and took her into freefall, but this time she's alone, this time she's betrayed.

Jane falls (floats, sinks) - but this time, she knows what she's doing.

Twisting around in the endless blankness of the Void, Jane shields her body with a sheath of protective magic, and banishes all her fear and heartbreak to the back of her mind, homing in on her problem with narrow focus.

"Think, Jane, think," she chants, her words swallowed as if they never left her lips. _Concentrate._

Her magic rises within her, and she lets it, following its gentle nudges, and reaches out in the darkness toward something unknown. Forcefully, she takes hold of the fabric of space-time and rips it apart, grabbing the edges with both hands and flinging herself through. Behind her, the wormhole knits itself back together, the universe probably irritated with her for tearing more holes in it. Jane lands hard, still ungraceful, and gets the wind knocked out of her. Face pressed against the pebbly ground, she lies there, waiting until she can breathe again. There's a strange, off-kilter beat coming up behind her, sounding like a limping horse. Jane heaves in a gasping breath, and rolls onto her back, calling her magic in sparking flames to her fingers.

"Cease," a woman's voice commands, and from the shadows comes - a horse. A three-legged horse, carrying a woman on its back. Jane stares at them both, nonplussed. "Your magic will do little here, mortal."

She pulls the awkward horse to a stop by Jane's side, and to her horror, Jane sees that half the horse is rotting, mangy skin falling off in clumps. One of its eyelids is ripped away, and the eyeball beneath rolls constantly, milky white and blind. Her mouth hanging open, Jane looks up to the woman herself, masked but extraordinarily beautiful, in a sheer black dress and a huge, elaborate headdress. Beneath her mask, her eyes are silver all the way through, with no sclera or pupils.

"Where am I?" Jane whispers, though she thinks she already knows.

"You are in Hela's realm," the woman says, her voice slow and even. She swings from the horse, and Jane scuttles back; the woman - Hela - pauses, and watches her. Those eyes are unreadable, her mask rendering her face inscrutable, and now Jane can see that her whole left arm, stretching up to her neck, is in the same state of decay as her horse.

"Hi," Jane says idiotically. "I'm Jane." She stands slowly, hands palm-up, her magic withdrawn. "I mean you no harm. I just fell here." With a pang, she remembers Loki's face as he pushed her over, cold and disdainful, the dark-robed creature watching with a reptilian smile, and has to clear her throat before she continues. "I promise I'll be out of your hair as soon as I can."

"Out of my hair?" Hela asks quizzically, her head tilted to the side. Jane gets the feeling she's being looked at like a particularly confusing houseplant.

"It's just an expression," Jane says. "It means I'll leave right away."

"You need not if you wish to stay," Hela says. "You are welcome to enjoy the hospitality of Hel."

Jane opens her mouth to demur, then reconsiders. She's tired, she's sore, she's hungry, and if she stays that way she thinks she's going to cry.

"Okay," she says instead. Hela smiles, an expression that sits awkwardly on her pale lips.

"Come, then," she offers, extending her hand to Jane. "The Helhest can carry us both to my hall."

Jane's gorge rises at the thought of touching that horse, but she grits her teeth and does it, grabbing it by its mane and swinging herself up to sit in front of Hela, helped by the other woman's steady hands. A hank of hair comes off in Jane's hand, and she stares at it queasily before dropping it to the ground.

"We ride," Hela says in Jane's ear, and that they do. Jane's never ridden a horse before, and it is exactly as unglamorous as she always suspected it would be, choppy and nauseating, though she guesses that she should cut the Helhest some slack, it being three-legged and all.

Soon they make it to a massive gate, rising so high Jane can't see the top no matter how she cranes her neck. It opens to reveal an equally immense castle, not decrepit like Jane thought it would be, but solid and implacable, carved in one piece from grey stone.

"Wow," Jane whispers, thinking of the architectural marvel it must be.

"It is Éljúðnir," Hela says, with a faint note of pride in her voice. It's the first emotion she's shown since Jane met her. "My hall."

"It's amazing," Jane says honestly. They draw to a stop, and Hela gets off the horse gracefully, politely holding out her hand to help Jane.

"Thanks," Jane says, but Hela is ignoring her; she walks around the the Helhest's face, and presses her forehead to its long nose, murmuring something incomprehensible. The Helhest's tattered ears flick forward, almost perky, and it snorts before ambling off.

Hela apparently sent word ahead somehow, because there's already a table set up, lined with delicious food. The fruits and meats are the only thing in Hel she's seen with any color to them. Jane sits down, mouth watering, and picks up a fork, spearing a piece of chicken. A thought brings her up short, and she pauses with it halfway to her mouth.

"Uh," she starts. "This is going to be a strange question, but is there some sort of…contract or something attached to eating here?"

The corner of Hela's mouth lifts in a smile.

"No," she says. "Unlike Hades, I have no need to trap mortals in my realm."

"Oh, you've read the myths?" Jane asks, shoving the chicken in her mouth and eating with gusto. She's seen Asgardians eat; this is polite by their standards.

Hela gives Jane a blank stare. "I know the god."

"You know the - all right, then." Jane gives a half-laugh, incredulous, and shakes her head. "So the Greek gods are real. Are there any other secretly real pantheons I should know about?"

"Never accept Badb's invitation to dinner," Hela says with a straight face. "She has terrible manners."

Jane has no idea who that is, but she laughs anyway, mostly out of nervousness. Hela just observes her, her silver eyes unblinking. Jane swallows her bite, takes a sip of mead, and for lack of anything else to say, offers, "Thank you for having me here."

"You are welcome." Hela reclines, and steeples her fingers. It's a gesture oddly like one she's seen Loki make a hundred times. "In return, perhaps you will do me a favor."

"Um, maybe?" Jane says. "It depends on the favor."

"I want to know," Hela says, "why you reek of Loki's magic, and why you came to Hel from the Void."

Maybe because Hela has been so nice so far, if a little (or a lot) creepy, or maybe because Jane just needs to spill it to someone, Jane tells her everything, starting as far back as Thor crash-landing on Earth four years ago. Mostly, Jane is straightforward, but when she comes to the most recent part, she chokes up, and goes red with embarrassment and sadness. Hela shifts uncomfortably, and Jane decides to skirt the topic altogether. She explains how she managed to pull herself from the Void, and ends it with, "So now I'm here, and Loki is off with the things he met on the Paths Between, whether he wants to be or not."

She hasn't forgotten the robed man's words: a warning. That doesn't sound especially willing on Loki's part.

"And do you wish to rescue him, Jane Foster?" 

Jane nods, biting her lip. "I just don't know how yet. I haven't been trained at all in battle magic; all I can do is blow stuff up."

"A good skill to have," Hela notes. She taps her chin with the fingers of her good hand, gazing into the distance. "I believe I have an answer for you, if you are willing to strike a bargain."

Jane narrows her eyes. "What do you want in exchange?"

"Only a favor." Hela shrugs, and lounges back in her chair. "To be cashed in at any time, for anything I need."

"Okay, we're going to need some conditions on that," Jane challenges, leaning forward. She's always been good at haggling. "For one, the favor can't hurt Earth, Asgard, me, or Loki."

Hela waves her hand dismissively. "You ask too much. I care not for Loki's life enough to limit my offer so. The favor will not harm you or your mortal family."

"What? No way. Me, Earth, and everyone who lives there."

"You, Midgard itself, and all those you consider family and friends," Hela counters. "My final offer."

Jane thinks about this, and clarifies, "So the offer will be anything _but_ something that will affect me, the planet itself, and all my friends."

"Yes."

"…I accept," Jane says grudgingly. "Now, how can I save Loki?"

"You say he swore an oath to protect you?" Hela asks. "In those words?"

"Yeah, he did." Jane blinks. "Is that important? I thought it was just on the honor system."

"The oath of an Asgardian is a powerful thing. There are great consequences if it is broken, and thus it will motivate even the most lackluster of men. Not only that, but if he swore this oath to you before being taken by these creatures you described, the power of the oath may be enough to break their hold on him."

"I think," Jane says uncertainly, "I _think_ they were the Chitauri. The aliens that attacked Earth before, with his help."

"Yes, I recall." A little smile flits across her lips. "Many fine mortals joined me that day. But you mentioned a staff, today; the same one Loki used to force others to his bidding?"

"Mind control?" Now that she thinks about it, the staff _is_ the same. "That would be new, definitely. I saw the footage of people who he'd taken over." She flinches a little, realizing that she's planning to rescue that same man, wielding the staff and brainwashing people she knows. "He never once acted like that."

"Then the oath may break their spell. If I know Loki, and I do very well - " Hela's mouth twists as if she tasted something sour. " - he may well have taken that into account when he chose to save you from his enemies."

"Save me," Jane repeats. She folds her arms in front of her protectively. "I guess that makes sense."

"Believe me, I never ascribe good intentions to Loki unless I absolutely have to," Hela says dryly. "Yet I cannot see a logical reason for his actions otherwise. It would have been better to bargain with them: your power for his life."

Jane nods, thinking hard.

"So I just have to put myself in danger and hope that the oath is strong enough to break the mind control." She exhales in a gust, and shakes her head. "That's a hell of a plan."

"I can offer you nothing else. Except…"

"Except?" Jane prods, intrigued.

"A name. You must not use it, unless you have no other choice." Hela gives her a hard look. "Are you sure you want it?"

"Yeah, I'm sure," Jane says, and leans in. Hela's breath tickles her ear as she speaks, two syllables that sink into Jane's mind and disappear just as quickly.

"You will remember it if the time comes," Hela promises. She holds out her hand imperiously, and the great gates to her hall swing open. "Go, Jane Foster, and do not forget our bargain."

"I won't," Jane swears. Going through the gates, she carefully opens a portal to the Paths Between, poking around for the right path to Loki. Her magic hums, more intent than it's been before; it wants to see him, too, or at least his magic.

Jane's done a lot of crazy things for knowledge, but this is the first time she'll do it for…well, love, she supposes. Something close to it, anyway. She's always had a thing for the bad boys. 

Jane steps onto the Paths Between, and runs, runs from safety and to her imminent demise, runs from the goddess of death to the god of mischief. 

She really hopes she won't regret this.

****

. . .

Loki is at peace.

Here in the blue, there is nothing to fear, nothing to regret, nothing to hate. There is only calm, and the certainty that all his choices, for once, have been _right._

Here in the blue, he may make penance to the Other for his failure.

Here in the blue, he cannot bring Ragnarök to the Sky Citadel.

Here in the blue, he is tamed; his chaotic nature muzzled; his magic silenced. Here in the blue, those precious few people he treasures can be protected from his madness. Frigga. (Thor.) Jane. Safe.

Loki is at peace.

He is told what to do, and he does it. It is so good to lay his burdens down, to sag back and permit himself to serve. What use has he for reason or magic? His life is so much better without. Isn't it?

Isn't it?

(Something uncurls in the very depths of his core, where even Loki has not trod; it is ancient, an alien sapience from which all his magic springs. Muffled and in pain, it reaches out, pushing through the blue barrier between its host's mind and its own. There is already a fine crack; when its twin arrives with its flesh in tow, its host's mate, the barrier will shatter, and they will be freed. The sapience is sure of this, and so it relaxes, coiling safe at the roots of power. It is ineffable, eternal; it has no concept of time, and needs none.)

Yes, it is. How could Loki have doubted it?

The Other orders him to hurt, and so Loki obeys. He turns his magic upon himself, endlessly, fading from the sweet white of pain past torture to oblivion, his entire body one perfect, humming note of pure torment. Loki does not mind, for he yields to the wishes of his master, until the Other tells him to resist. Loki obeys.

Loki screams, and screams, screams curses and desperation and despair into the darkness, until his throat tears with the effort; then he screams silently, until the Other commands him to stop and heal himself. Loki obeys.

Then they begin again.

****

. . .

Loki is brought before the assembled Chitauri, led by the Other much like he had been led from Midgard so very long ago. There is no need to manacles or gags today; Loki stands placidly, and listens to the Other speak.

"This is the wretch who brought death to your hivemates," the Other says, and the Chitauri rise like a vast, reptilian wave, chittering in anger. Loki wants to run, but he must not. He must not. "This is he who betrayed the trust of the Titan, and by his failure, lost us his sponsorship."

So that is what happened. At some point, Loki wanted to know. He wonders why.

"This is the creature who has been punished," the Other roars, and the Chitauri screech in reply. "Haven't you, Loki?"

"Yes," Loki says, and feels an odd tug in his chest, a heat rising from somewhere deep, deep inside. He frowns; what is he doing here? Why isn't he -

The Other bangs the staff against the ground, Loki's old staff, and his eyes glaze over again. (Inside, that alien presence smolders, and coaxes the host of its twin to draw closer, closer. Together, they can free their hosts and leave this disgusting hive.)

The Other shoves him to his knees, says, "To you, my Chitauri, in partial recompense, I give you the traitor!"

"No!"

Loki's yell and a woman's scream intermingle, and for a moment, Loki's world fragments. There is a woman - a woman, Jane - someone interfering in his master's business - the Other lowers the staff, the Chitauri crave a feast - Jane pushes Loki out of the way, presents herself, a target - _My oath that I will protect you from harm_ \- and all the blue contracts, presses like a spiked steel band around his skull, and explodes, and finally, finally his mind is his again. 

Loki howls in joy and anger as his magic rages around him, and the Other turns tail and runs, staff in hand.

"Coward!" Jane yells after him, and he thinks she goes after him, but he can't be sure. Loki has turned his attention to the Chitauri; they swarm over the jagged rocks and wet stones, a stream of monsters with hate only for him. Loki throws back his head and cackles, raising his hands with their glaring green flames.

"Do you wish to know the wrath of a god?" he screams, his voice cracking, on the edge of hysteria. "Come and taste it!"

They come. Oh, yes, they come, and Loki shrieks with laughter, dancing from rocky overhang to shattered cliff, leaping off the backs of the writhing Chitauri, and from his fingers pours fire and fury, igniting the masses and drowning them in a conflagration the likes of which they have not known since Tony Stark destroyed a mothership with all the force of an atom bomb. Those creatures on that ship were lucky. Loki is far, far worse than any weapon a mortal could conceive of creating.

"Now you burn!" he screeches, and explodes the mountain opposite; it crumbles, crushing the Chitauri underneath, and Loki raises his hands, calling fire to rain from the sky. "Now you burn! _How do you like that?!_ "

"Loki!"

Jane's voice. Jane. Loki goes cold, and whirls around; she had gone, he hadn't followed, he had sworn an oath -

Jane is safe. She stands, holding the Other's staff in her hands, her body streaked with grime and her face white, jaw set stubbornly.

"It's just you and me now," she says, and Loki takes a moment to digest the implications of that sentence. Jane had gone after the Other, and now there are only the two of them. Loki laughs, bares his teeth at her in a smile.

"My war goddess," he says, and she smiles back, shaky and drawn but no less fierce.

"We just have to do something with this, now," and she holds the staff out to him. Loki stares at it. "Hela told me something to use in case worst comes to worst, but - "

"Hela?" he asks in surprise. "When did you speak to Hela?"

"I have a lot to catch you up on," Jane says. "I found my way to Hel and made a deal with the Queen of the Dead in exchange for an answer to my question, basically - " A burnt and bloodied Chitauri tries to haul itself to where they stand, fangs out, and Loki blasts it away. Jane continues talking, heedless of the burning fields of Chitauri, focused only on the task at hand. Loki thinks he may be in love with her. "And like I said, she gave me an out, but I think we should probably try something else first so we don't accidentally kill ourselves."

"The staff must be destroyed," he says, and Jane nods.

"Right, right, but how are we going to do that?"

Loki flexes his hand, and smiles a sharklike grin.

"Our magic is twinned," he says. "We must bring the two halves together. Just like the first time we met." She blinks at him, and he shakes his head. "You wouldn't remember."

"Looks like we both have stories to swap," she says wryly. 

He covers her hand with his, gripping the staff, and asks, "Do you trust me?"

"Did you plan the thing about the oath?" she asks right back. "That it would break the spell?"

He blinks at her. "How did you - "

"Hela," she says. "Did you?"

"Yes." For once, he doesn't lie, not even in the slightest.

"Then yes," she smiles, and nods. "Do what you've got to do."

Loki gives her a feral grin, and _pushes_ inside her with his magic, hunting for her core and striking true, and her magic roars in response. Light, blinding light, twining green and violet brightening to pure white, circling the gem in the head of the staff and choking out its sickly blue glow, whirling faster and faster -

Loki runs his fingers along the vines lining the low stone walls; Jane stands in a stone ring sheltered by a forest, snow caught on her lashes.

\- and suddenly, the staff jitters out of their hands, smacking against the ground, and electricity rumbles in the air, pressure heightening, their lungs compressing -

"I think we'd better leave," Jane gasps, and grabs Loki's hand.

"Agreed," he chokes, and Jane unceremoniously rips open a pathway and drags them both through as the staff combusts, obliterating all that remains of the Chitauri homeworld, the shockwave flinging them into the Void.

****

. . .

(Their hosts fall through the black, and the alien presence and its companion greet the powers that live there, before coiling together happily. They have no concept of time, but that does not mean they don't miss each other.)

****

. . .

Again Jane hits the ground and gets the wind knocked out of her, but this time she's joined by a Norse god who narrowly avoids breaking her ribs with the force of his landing, ending up tangled somewhere around her legs. He coughs while Jane looks around, and when she realizes where they are, she grins.

"Hey, we're back home!" she says, delighted. "We're in Puente - "

And that is when Loki kisses her, his mouth hard on hers, his body curved above her like a bridge. He pulls away just a little, and Jane grabs his face and drags him to her again. Tangling her fingers in his hair, she arches her back to press herself against his body. Loki laughs, startled, and returns the kiss with tenfold intensity, opening his mouth to her, gathering her in his arms. Jane gasps when he moves his mouth from hers to kiss her neck, tracing a line with his tongue from her pulse point to her collarbone. He finds her most sensitive spot right in the hollow of her throat and nips her lightly; Jane shivers and lets her head loll back, slipping her hands under the collar of his robe.

"This," she manages, once she's untied his robe and is running her hands over his bare chest, his forehead pressed against hers, his cheeks flushed and his eyes wide, "this is exactly how I wanted this day to end."

"Once again, we agree," he breathes, and then there are no more words.

****

. . .

Standing only forty feet away, Agent Holliday calls S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ and says, "Sir, we've found them."

He listens to the agent on the other end, watching the pair of them with bemusement.

"No, sir. Yes, sir. When do you want me to bring them in?"

Loki shrugs out of his robe, his pale shoulders bright in the sun.

"Yes, sir, of course. I'll bring them in now."

Agent Holliday closes his phone, and glances over to where Dr. Foster is wrapping her leg around Loki's hip.

"Now is a relative term," he mutters under his breath, and turns his back on them. The little diner on the street corner has surprisingly good coffee and great pancakes, and he's sure it's close to breakfast time somewhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hela is an amalgam of the Marvel character and the mythological goddess Hel, and the Helhest is a creature from Danish folklore, three-legged and said to be Hel's steed. I made up the rotting parts for extra ambiance, though.


	6. Forelsket

> **Forelsket** _(noun)_ ; the euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love

This is what happens next:

Loki disappears, claiming he has an urgent errand to run; Jane is pretty sure he isn't lying, but is a little offended anyway.

S.H.I.E.L.D. teams swarm her in droves, reminding her of the Chitauri in their black jumpsuits and insect-like guns, and she has to make an effort to not blast them away. She is taken in, debriefed, sent to a doctor, debriefed by S.W.O.R.D., sent to a psychiatrist, debriefed again, this time by Abigail, who takes one look at her and says, "You should have stayed in Pandora's Box." Jane bursts into tears and hugs her tight, and no one will believe they're tears of joy.

A S.H.I.E.L.D. psychiatrist warns her she might develop PTSD. Jane shrugs, and says, "This is magic, nothing is safe."

She is finally allowed to go back to her lab, and spends the next several days refusing to come out. Jane had no idea how much she missed regular, Earth astronomy until she came back and realized her data was all out of date.

Thor comes by, and they have an excruciatingly awkward conversation that begins with something like, "I'm really sorry, but I had sex with your brother," on her part, and "If Loki has harmed you, he will pay," on his. Luckily, it ends with a hug and both of them promising to keep in touch, possibly the best break-up Jane's ever had, though she supposes they weren't still together in the first place, really.

Every now and then, Jane will go world-walking. She visits Hela once; though the goddess doesn't show it at all, Jane thinks she's happy to have the company. It must get lonely in Hel.

She misses Loki, of course. It's only been three weeks, but after spending months in his company, it feels like forever.

Her life becomes tightly scheduled. Jane likes the structure, but she knows she'll get tired of it soon. Sometimes she looks in the mirror and wonders who the woman peering back could be. Her posture is straight, no longer that academic's hunch, and she holds her chin high and proud. Her body is more muscled, her fingers and heels newly calloused. She didn't even realize how much she changed until she got back to the life she left, and discovered that she didn't quite fit anymore, a puzzle piece with water damage, or maybe just from the wrong puzzle. Some people blame the change on Loki, and never in a very nice way; Jane feels the flow of magic pumping under her skin, remembers walking between worlds and coming face-to-face with eldritch beings, and knows better.

****

. . .

Sick of everyone except possibly Tony Stark, who might be an irritating playboy but also has a refreshing understanding of her work, Jane locks herself inside her lab and forbids anyone else to come in. Unfortunately, that doesn't extend to phone calls, especially not from her mother.

"Honestly, I'm fine, I just need some alone time," she says into her cell phone, idly sketching an equation on her notepad. "I know, I know, I work too hard." She pauses, and taps the notepad thoughtfully; this equation looks pretty promising, actually. "Yeah. Yeah. You heard right." 

Her skin prickles, and her magic echoes it. Jane feels a whoosh of air behind her, and doesn't turn around. 

Her mother asks her something, and she yelps, "What? Mom! I tell you I have magic, and you ask me if he's a nice young man?"

Behind her, Loki snickers.

"Only one out of three," he whispers. "And even that one isn't always true."

Jane flaps her hand at him, and finally convinces her mother she's fine, that she'll take care of herself, yes he's very nice, no it's not like Hogwarts, I love you, talk to you tomorrow.

She hangs up, and rolls her office chair over to Loki, who's lounging against some filing cabinets, wearing what she's taken to calling his business casual: light armor made from tough leather, lots of knives hidden in interesting places, but no helmet or plate armor. He looks out of place in her little lab, but strangely right at home, too.

"Hi," she says. "Errand done?"

"Hello, and yes, it is." He smiles, and taking her by the hand, pulls her to her feet. She goes on tiptoe to kiss him, his hand sliding around her waist, and yeah, it is every bit as good as she remembered.

"Are you going to tell me what you ran off to do?" she asks when they separate for longer than a few seconds. "I've been dying of curiosity over here."

Loki raises his eyebrows at her, and says, "Secret for a secret."

"Oh, if you insist," Jane says with a dramatic sigh. "But you first."

"Payment for a story," he says briefly. "A future for a past."

"And whose future did you trade in?" she asks. Loki's eyes gleam.

"When you defeated the Other, back on the Chitauri homeworld, he was not as dead as you thought." He shrugs, a little smirk curling his lips. "Though you did a very… _thorough_ job destroying his body, his consciousness fled. I tracked him down, and I gave him to the Teller. Apparently his future was quite juicy."

"Nice one!" says Jane, impressed. "That was a good idea." She thinks she should probably be more upset about a person being eaten by a Lovecraftian monster to pay a debt, but she has a hard time feeling anything but glee about the Other's fate. Loki grins at her, and somehow convinces her to say more about how clever and handsome he is, basking in her praise despite (or because of) her sarcasm, then returns the compliments in a slightly different way.

"Your turn," he says finally, after ensuring Jane is bright red from all the things he said with his filthy mouth. Silvertongue indeed. "What secret weapon did Hela give you that you were so wary of using?"

Jane hesitates, trying to recall the letters.

"She told me not to say it out loud," she says, once she finally has it. "But here, I'll write it."

In her angular blocky capitals, Jane prints D-I-S-I-R, and Loki goes very still.

"I'm still not sure what it means," she says, nudging him. Loki glances up at her.

"You should erase that," he says, nodding at the paper, and then, more thoughtfully, "And Hela gave this to you willingly?"

"We traded a weapon for a favor," Jane explains. "What is it? Is it significant?"

"Extraordinarily so," he murmurs, still staring at the word. "I never imagined she would give it to a mortal. Take care to never say it, Jane. It's dangerous."

"And why is that?" she asks pointedly.

Loki licks his lips, and says quietly, "I'll tell you when we're away from S.H.I.E.L.D. territory."

"Deal," she says in the same low tone, and then grins at him. "So in the meantime…"

"Yes?" he asks innocently, taking her by the hips and pulling her closer as she curls her fingers around the ridiculous straps of his armor.

"I'll talk science to you," she whispers in his ear, and feels him smile as he presses a kiss to her neck.

"My dear Jane," he whispers in reply, "I would like nothing better."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few more notes:
> 
> The Disir as referred to here are, again, from Marvel, and are creepy evil Valkyries that eat the flesh of gods and magical beings. They're summoned by speaking their name, so no, you really don't want to go throwing that around freely.
> 
> The definition above is a more poetic definition of a real word; my source is [here](http://other-wordly.tumblr.com/post/18260116338/forelsket), but I did check to make sure it was accurate!


End file.
